From: q <liblanc1@nic.cerf.net> Newsgroups: alt.quotations Subject: Re: Serenity Prayer Date: Fri, 28 Jul 1995 23:01:18 -0700 cc: Sir Hans <dok@fwi.uva.nl><Sir Hans, I submit this for your consideration for The alt.quotations FAQ.>
God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed; Give me courage to change things which must be changed; And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr.--_The A.A. Grapevine,_ January 1950, pp. 6-7; also June Bingham, _Courage to Change,_ p. iii (1961), where the version differs somewhat: "O God, give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed, courage to change what should be changed, and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." Alcoholics Anonymous has used this prayer, with minor changes in wording, since about 1940. According to the first source, Dr. Niebuhr said, "It may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself." The Anglican publishing house, Mobray of London, for more than a century has identified it as a General or Common Prayer of fourteenth-century England, according to a reader of _American Notes and Queries,_ June 1970, p. 154. He added that "Reinhold Niebuhr has acknowledged, more than once, both in seminar and publicly that he was not the original author of the Serenity Prayer." In _Ausblick von der Weibertreu_ by Christoph Duncker, p. 1 (1973), the following lines are attributed to a Johann Christoph Oetinger, deacon in Weinnsberg from 1762 to 1769: "Gib mir Gelassenheit, Dinge hinzunehmen, die ich nicht a"ndern kann, Den Mut, Dinge zu a"ndern kann, und die Weisheit, das eine vom andern zu untersheiden," which can be translated as above. Another reader of _American Notes and Queries,_ October 1969, p. 25, gives a nearly identical quotation and states that it can be traced to Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), German theologian and theosophist, without giving a source. Whatever the original source or wording, Niebuhr and A.A. have made the prayer well-known in the United States.
Ref.: Platt, Suzy, ed. _Respectfully Quoted: a Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service._ Washington: Library of Congress, 1989. p. 276. -------------------------- For every evil under the sun, There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try and find it, If there be none, never mind it. W.C. Hazlitt, _English Proverbs,_ p. 135. (1869) Apparently an adaptation of the Spanish proverb, "Si hay remedio porqui te apuras? Si no hay remedio porqui te apuras?"
Ref.: Stevenson, Burton. _The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases._ New York: Macmillan, 1956. p. 714.
Bill Thomas a" = a mit umlaut liblanc1@cerf.net
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