“En toute chose il faut considérer la fin.”
“In everything one must consider the end.”
Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)
French poet and writer of fables
It’s from La Fontaine’s Book III (1668), Fable 5 (The Fox
and the Gnat).
It’s a very early and very elegant way of saying that, as a
mark of prudence and for the most pleasing successes, one should always take
the long view.
Mark Strand, a past Poet Laureate of the United States, offered
this complementary observation:
“The future is always beginning now.”
Indeed.
Jean de La Fontaine isn’t at the top of the charts these
days, but he was a familiar voice to educated Americans and Europeans in the 18th
century. David McCullough notes that President John Adams was wont to quote
from the fables of La Fontaine.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2014
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