In social networks they like to quote a motivational statement attributed to the famous navigator. We checked whether he said something like that.
The phrase “You will never cross the ocean if you do not get the courage to lose sight of the shore” distributes as a quote for Columbus on sites with aphorisms (Socratify.net, "Quotes of famous personalities","Pearls of thought"), Information resources (Rambler), V booksas well as on social networks. She gained particular popularity on Facebook (there are publications with 562, 464, 309, 215 And 187 reposts at the time of writing of the analysis) and in VKontakte (679 reposts). Quote is well known and in English -speaking world.
The final and most active part of the life of the Spanish navigator of Italian origin Christopher Columbus She went on travels, which did not prevent him from leaving a number of written documents, some of which were preserved only in the form of copies, albeit sometimes incomplete. This is first of all Diary of his first journey, Letter to Spain About the results of swimming, ""Book of prophecies","Book of privileges", The so -called O'Gorman's manuscript And yet Nine letters, attributed to Columbus. However, neither in these documents, nor in biographies, presumably written by Ernando, the son of a traveler, not in a three -volume fictionalized Biography Columbus of the authorship of the American writer Washington Irving “verified” did not find statements similar to the quote that interests us.
If we trace the history of circulation of quotes in the network in Russian, we can find that 10-15 years ago, Columbus was attributed it quite rarely. On some sites Aphorism is indicated without authorship, in a number of sources the name of the American writer, Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature appears William Faulkner.
As for the English -language segment of the Internet, there is a quote in the option “You can’t swim to new horizons until you get the courage to lose sight of the shore”, indeed, quite often attributed Falkner, but also appears in print publications only in the last two decades. In the works of the writer himself there is no. However, the attribution of Columbus, judging by publications on the network and data of the "Google Book" resource, was fixed for the quote quite late, already in the 21st century. But this does not mean that the statement at that time was little -known. So, in June 1992 in one of his speeches He mentioned US President George Bush Sr. But in the magazine issue Life For September 17, 1971, the quote was authored by another Nobel laureate, French writer Andre Jew.
Indeed, in one of the episodes "Counterfeiters”(1925), the most famous novel of the Jew, one of the main characters, the writer Eduar, admits:“ I often thought that in art and in literature in particular, only those who rush into the unknown are important. You can not open the new land, disagreing at first and lose sight of any shore for a long time ... "
The statement with the attribution of the Jew became popular in the English -speaking world - for example, in 1970 it fell into the collection Quote The International Thesaurus of Quotations. At the same time, the very topic of the fatefulness of the “loss of the coast” was not new and in different context was played out Many writers And earlier. It can be assumed that Columbus began to attribute the phrase simply because it is the most famous navigator in the West. One way or another, but the real author of the statement is the French writer Andre Jew.
Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons
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