pothos.org

This subject was covered here: http://www.pothos.org/content/index.php?page=quotes[url][/url], but as I posted on wiki quotes, this seems a likely source of the original wording (though maybe not the source of the sentiment):
"Nothing remains when that day comes but to sit down and weep like Alexander when he wanted other worlds to conquer." Fainall in William Concreve's Way of the World (1700).

This might be the link to the original post on the subject you meant http://www.pothos.org/forum/viewtopic.p ... uer#p13765. (You need to put the web address between the two sets of square brackets).

Any way you look at it, the quote makes Alexander look like a spoilt brat who's lost his toys, and is inaccurate as he fully knew there were plenty of lands he had not conquered - the rest of India, Arabia, the Italian peninsula, the rest of North Africa, the western Mediterranean, north of the Danube etc. He must also have been aware that lands stretched beyond the known confines of his world. He might not have thought they were worth conquering, but...

Thanks, but I actually was referring to the post I tried to link to (doing that on a smartphone is more tedious than a computer hence the failure to do it right). I'd been reading other debates on where this quote came from, and no one mentioned Concreve's play from 1700.

Do I think this really happened? No. Alexander knew he was leaving India largely untouched. But the quote from The Way of the World is a facetious attempt for the character to compare his exploits with women to Alexander's conquering the worl and their both having run out of conquests.

I just hate to think that most people believe Hans Gruber from Die Hard was the one who came up with the idea after incorrectly attributing this to Plutarch.

Matt52 wrote:Thanks, but I actually was referring to the post I tried to link to (doing that on a smartphone is more tedious than a computer hence the failure to do it right). I'd been reading other debates on where this quote came from, and no one mentioned Concreve's play from 1700.

Do I think this really happened? No. Alexander knew he was leaving India largely untouched. But the quote from The Way of the World is a facetious attempt for the character to compare his exploits with women to Alexander's conquering the worl and their both having run out of conquests.

I just hate to think that most people believe Hans Gruber from Die Hard was the one who came up with the idea after incorrectly attributing this to Plutarch.

That is the trouble with the Net. Twenty years ago, people who cared would have gone to a dictionary of quotations written by someone who had put a lot of thought into the question and checked other references. Today they google, and their algorithm won't necessarily bring up the dry site by someone who checks sources before the 20th century ahead of IMDB.

On the bright side, people away from a big library can find obscure sources.