windows and doors (was: William Safire)

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Laurence Horn wrote:

> "I'm sure most of you have seen 'Sound of the Music'. But I'm not
> sure if you remember
> this. Maria used to say this to herself. "When the Lord closes a
> door, somewhere he
> opens a window." This can be applied to a science, too."  (and goes

This is a variant of the old proverb, "When one door shuts, another
opens," attested as early as 1586.  O'Casey's _Juno and Paycock_ (1925)
has "Ah, God never shut wan door but he opened another."

Fred Shapiro


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------