History
The phrase's earliest recording is from 1546 as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?" (John Heywood's "A dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue"). This phrase alludes to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards. The modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signaled in 1749 or 1812.
Read more about this topic: Have One's Cake And Eat It Too
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
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“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
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