{"id":24251,"date":"2019-08-10T20:14:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T10:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=24251"},"modified":"2019-09-18T23:09:33","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T13:09:33","slug":"it-cant-be-done-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=24251","title":{"rendered":"It Can’t Be Done"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"It<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Brian Bigelow Report: It’s a nice phrase, however, the earliest evidence of this quote being a Chinese Proverb was made in 1962 by a magazine that included a “words of wisdom” section, and precluded every one of them with “Confucius say:” regardless of whether the phrase came from Confucius or not. Pre-1962 the phrase was known as early as 1902, but none of those uses were attributed to Confucius. In short, this is unlikely to be a Chinese proverb; still a nice phrase though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a related note, there’s also a nice poem with a similar theme published in 1917 by Edgar Albert Guest titled ‘It Couldn’t Be Done’ (posted below)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
\nBut he with a chuckle replied
\nThat “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
\nWho wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
\nOn his face. If he worried he hid it.
\nHe started to sing as he tackled the thing
\nThat couldn’t be done, and he did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
\nAt least no one ever has done it;”
\nBut he took off his coat, and he took off his hat,
\nAnd the first thing we knew he’d begun it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
\nWithout any doubting or quiddit,
\nHe started to sing as he tackled the thing
\nThat couldn’t be done, and he did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
\nThere are thousands to prophesy failure;
\nThere are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
\nThe dangers that wait to assail you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
\nJust take off your coat and go to it;
\nJust start to sing as you tackle the thing
\nThat “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Brian Bigelow Report: It’s a nice phrase, however, the earliest evidence of this quote being a Chinese Proverb was made in 1962 by a magazine that included a “words of wisdom” section, and precluded every one of them with “Confucius say:” regardless of whether the phrase came from Confucius or not. Pre-1962 the phrase … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “It Can’t Be Done”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-health-tips","category-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24253,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24251\/revisions\/24253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}