And "May you live in interesting times"...
'May you live in interesting times' is widely reported as being of ancient Chinese origin but is neither Chinese nor ancient, being recent and western. It certainly seems to have been intended to sound oriental, in the faux-Chinese 'Confucius he say' style, but that's as near to China as it actually gets. Confucius's actual sayings are as elusive as those of his western counterpart Aesop - we have no written records from either of them.
so, who said it? Well, as often is the way of these things no one is sure who introduced the term but the person who did most to bring it to the public's attention was Robert Kennedy. In a speech in Cape Town in June 1966, Kennedy said:
There is a Chinese curse which says 'May he live in interesting times.' Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.
As those who lived through the 1960s (and can remember) will recall, they were nothing if not interesting....including me being born, a momentous event for me mum, if no-one else!
oh, and the Brown Tree Frogs are back, and busy putting spawn into ponds and on trees to confuse people with its hardened brown casing.
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