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Or, to split its infinitives,

You’re right, I’m in complete disagreement with you.

hmmm

It’s funny (to me) that the last person I heard use this Roosevelt quote was Rob Bell in video-taped remarks to CBA retailers, using it as the key argument for them to accept the TNIV as a legit translation.

I’m just sayin’.

Hooray! This is one of my favorite quotes ever…only you’ve got to go through the whole thing until you get to phrase “…the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” Since I am not limited by 22 words:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually try to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they have lived in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt, 1899, Chicago

Thanks for posting this!

Kristin,

I took it from your cubicle.

Thanks!

And, I like the part that is just before it in Roosevelt’s speech at the Panama Canal.

“Like bubbles. . .”

“From time to time, little men will come along to find fault with what you have done; to say that something could have been done better; that there has been some mistake, some shortcoming; that things are not really managed in the best of all possible manners, in the best of all possible worlds. They will have their say and they will go downstream like bubbles; they will vanish; but the work you have done will remain for the ages. “

it’s perfectly permissible to “split infinitives” in all English dialects. it isn’t in Latin (because Latin has one-word infinitives!) and that’s why somebody invented this arbitrary nonsense about splitting

i know what you’re thinking - linguists love to boldly go where no [person] has gone before.

Nonsense. Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. Paul critiques the wisdom of the Jewish and Greek minds, then affirms the truth. The gospel / preaching isn’t a magic message that makes people think that its true. Rational mature people come to believe something is true through simultaneously seeing that it is good, as well as seeing contradictory views critiqued and refuted.

Let’s proclaim the truth, but lets be persuasive both by letting people see that the gospel is good, but also that it smashes any alternatives into the dust.

Tom,

I agree with you.

My point is basically that a response like yours–true as it may be–would be more effective without your first word.

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