dots-menu
×

Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)


Contents -AUTHOR INDEX -KEYWORD INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1291
AUTHOR: Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
QUOTATION: One thing alone not even God can do,
To make undone whatever hath been done.
ATTRIBUTION: ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. Robert Williams, book 6, chapter 2, p. 154 (1879). Aristotle attributed these words to Agathon, an Athenian tragic poet who lived in the latter half of the fifth century B.C.

In his column, “Today and Tomorrow,” Walter Lippmann attributed the same idea to George Santayana: “He might meditate on Santayana’s saying that not even God can change the past.”—New York Herald Tribune, June 11, 1951, p. 17. Unverified.
SUBJECTS: Past
 


Contents -AUTHOR INDEX -KEYWORD INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD