better to light the candle than to curse the darkness - 1907

[Randy Alexander]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness."
> Citation: "The Supreme Conquest: and Other Sermons Preached in
> America" by William Lonsdale Watkinson, Fleming H. Revell Company, New
> York, page 218, 1907.
>
> The book is downloadable from Google Books and the document appears to
> be correctly dated.
>
> Page 418 of YBQ gives a 1940 citation and suggests it "may indeed have
> been a Chinese saying". ADS-L archives have a post in 2004 with
> citations in the 1940s. Encarta Book of Quotations says it is a
> "Chinese Proverb".

I found the Chinese proverb.  It is:
In Chinese characters: 与其诅咒黑暗，不如点燃蜡烛。
In pinyin: yǔqí zǔzhòu hēi'à n, bùrú diǎnrán là zhú.

On Chinese sites, I see it attributed mostly to Anna Louise Strong,
but that appears to be because she used in in her "Letters from
China".

I also found a version attributed to Che Guevara that says "It is
better to burn yourself than curse the darkness."  This also has a
Chinese version.

It seems likely that it started in the US and was brought to China by Strong.

See the last entry here:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Proverbs_commonly_attributed_to_be_Chinese

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen

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