well-traveled snowclone

[Garson O'Toole]

There is a poem in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861 called "The Washers of
the Shroud" by James Russell Lowell that contains the line:

The brave makes danger opportunity;

http://books.google.com/books?id=OFkCAAAAIAAJ&q=waverer#v=snippet&

The poem was popular and reprinted many times, e.g., in 1912 in  the
Yale Book of American Verse edited by Thomas R. Lounsbury.

http://www.bartleby.com/102/129.html

In 1903 the phrase is remembered and labeled great in a poem excerpt:

... all danger disappeared as if by magic; and again were exemplified
those great words of Lowell:

   "The brave makes danger opportunity;
     The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime,
    Dwarfs it to peril."

http://books.google.com/books?id=mzATAAAAIAAJ&q=danger#v=snippet&

The line was extracted and featured in another work (in quotes) titled
"In the Wilderness" by David Starr Jordan, Chancellor of Stanford
University in 1914.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qrc9AAAAIAAJ&q=cannonades#v=snippet&

But proverbial status apparently eluded the phrase.
Garson

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: well-traveled snowclone
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Cf. the Pamglossian line from George Axelrod, Al Hine, Larry H.
> Johnson, _Lord Love a Duck_ (1966) (minister loq.): "Remember, prayers
> *are*  answered.  Because whatever happens - that's the answer!"
>
> Worthy of YBQ if it isn't there.
>
> JL
>
> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: well-traveled snowclone
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>>
>> And this, a little earlier:
>>
>> 1900  S. B. Rossiter, =93A Message to the Auxiliaries of the McAll
>> Association of America,=94 _American McAll Record_ 18, no. 1 (Feb.) 7 (in=
>  a
>> quoted letter from the author, said to have been written the previous Dec=
> .):
>> =93What is crisis?  One of two things.  Opportunity or defeat.  Can God s=
> uffer
>> defeat?  No.  Then crisis is opportunity.=94
>>
>> --Charlie
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>> Charles C Doyle [cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
>> Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 1:04
>> PM-----------------------------------------------------------------------=
> --------
>>
>> Aside from the matter of the pictograph, in the Modern Proverbs files we
>> have this for the English proverb "A crisis is an opportunity" (it might =
> be
>> noteworthy that the saying occurs in a "missionary" magazine):
>>
>> 1904  C. P. Middleton, =93The Present Crisis,=94 _Women=92s Missionary Ma=
> gazine_
>> (of the United Free Church of Scotland) 37: 286:  =93A crisis is an
>> opportunity; and our chief concern should be lest [sic] we should fail to
>> use this opportunity aright.=94
>>
>> --Charlie
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Ben
>> Zimmer [bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU]
>> Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 12:27 PM
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >  An old business snowclone involves the alleged danger/opportunity or
>> > risk/opportunity duality in a single character. Another version that
>> > made it into Tom Wolfe's novels is that the Chinese word for "crisis" i=
> s
>> > composed of two symbols--for danger and for opportunity.
>> >
>> > Language Log had covered this before:
>> >
>> > http://bit.ly/c9HFXl
>> >
>> > with a nod to a more direct debunking
>> >
>> > http://bit.ly/cWaoWs
>> >
>> > This morning, on Colorado Public Radio, Tom Tancredo invented yet
>> > another version:
>> >
>> > "Chinese symbol for opportunity and problem is the same symbol."
>>
>> For historical background on the spread of the trope, both in its
>> "crisis =3D danger + opportunity" and "crisis =3D opportunity" variants,
>> see my Language Log post:
>>
>> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004343.html
>>
>> Related posts listed here:
>>
>> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3D1212
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ben Zimmer
>> http://benzimmer.com/
>>
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>
>
>
> --=20
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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