Thomas Fuller? Saadi Shīrāzī? Moncure Daniel Conway? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Developing knowledge and skills takes time and effort. There is no shortcut for obtaining crucial capabilities. Here is a pertinent adage:
Everything is difficult before it becomes easy.
This saying has been attributed to the 18th century British physician Thomas Fuller and the 13th century Persian poet Saadi Shīrāzī. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in the 1732 collection “Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings” compiled by Thomas Fuller. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
All things are difficult, before they are easy.
The adage has often been attributed to Thomas Fuller, and he did help to popularize the statement. However, Fuller was primarily a collector and not a crafter of sayings. The original creator remains anonymous.
QI believes that the attribution to Saadi Shīrāzī was based on a misreading of an 1874 citation. Details are given further below. Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
“Gnomologia” included other proverbs about the easiness of tasks such as the following two items:2
All things are easy, that are done willingly.
Nothing is easy to the unwilling.
In 1874 Moncure Daniel Conway published “The Sacred Anthology: A Book of Ethnical Scriptures” which included an adage followed by a passage from Saadi:3
Have patience! All things are difficult before they become easy.
In the land of Baelkán, relates Sádi, I visited a religious man, to whom I said, ‘Cleanse me from ignorance by your doctrine.’ He replied, ‘Go and suffer with patience, like the earth, O learned in the law, or else bury in the earth all that you have studied.’
The passage above which begins “In the land …” is an English translation of text from Saadi in the work “The Gulistan of Shaik Saday (or The Rose Garden)”.4 The adage which begins “Have patience! All things …” does not appear in the text by Saadi. Apparently, the editor Conway prepended the adage to help explain the text. Thus, the adage should not be credited to Saadi.
In 1948 “The Macmillan Book Of Proverbs, Maxims, And Famous Phrases” compiled by Burton Stevenson contained this entry:5
All Things are difficult before they are easy.
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, No. 560. (1732)
The December 15, 1949 issue of “Forbes” magazine published a miscellaneous collection sayings under the title “Thoughts On the Business of Life” including the following:6
Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy. —Saadi.
QI believes that the above item was probably derived from a misinterpretation of the 1874 citation.
In 1968 “The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life” repeated the attribution to Saadi:7
Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy. — Saadi
In 1996 “The International Thesaurus of Quotations” contained the following entry:8
All things are difficult before they are easy.
THOMAS FULLER, M.D., GNOMOLOGIA (1732), 560
In conclusion, Thomas Fuller helped to popularize this saying by including it in his important 1732 compilation “Gnomologia”. The adage was already in circulation and the creator remains anonymous. The attribution to Saadi Shīrāzī was probably based on a misreading of an 1874 book by Moncure Daniel Conway.
Image Notes: Illustration of barbells used for weight training from OpenClipart-Vectors at Pixabay. The image has been resized and retouched.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. The person told QI about the attributions to Thomas Fuller and Saadi.
- 1732, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Collected by Thomas Fuller, Proverb Number 560, Quote Page 21, Printed for B. Barker, A. Bettesworth, and C. Hitch, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1732, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Collected by Thomas Fuller, Proverb Number 561, Quote Page 21, Proverb Number 3663, Quote Page 156, Printed for B. Barker, A. Bettesworth, and C. Hitch, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1874, The Sacred Anthology: A Book of Ethnical Scriptures, Collected and edited by Moncure Daniel Conway, Chapter: Ethics of Intellect, Passage: CCCXVI, Quote Page 211, Trübner & Company, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1861, The Gulistan of Shaik Saday (or The Rose Garden): A Complete Analysis of the Entire Persian Text by Major R. P. Anderson, Chapter 8, Tale 20, Quote Page 524, Thacker Spink and Company, Calcutta, India. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1948, The Macmillan Book Of Proverbs, Maxims, And Famous Phrases, Selected and Arranged by Burton Stevenson, Topic: Difficulty, Quote Page 574, Column 2, The Macmillan Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1949 December 15, Forbes, Volume 64, Number 12, Thoughts On the Business of Life, Quote Page 34, Column 3, B. C. Forbes Publishing Company, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1968, The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life by Forbes Magazine, Quote Page 471, Published by Forbes, Inc., New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 1996, The International Thesaurus of Quotations, Compiled by Eugene Ehrlich and Marshall DeBruhl, (Revised and Updated), Topic: Difficulty, Quote Page 163, HarperResource: HarperCollins, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎