Talk:Fishing

Fishing quote with various attributions

I am posting here following a discussion at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities.

One thing missing from this article is the quotation that goes roughly "The gods do not deduct from one's life the time spent fishing."

Various forms of this have been attributed to various places:

• "God does not charge time spent fishing against a man’s allotted life span" — attributed as an "American Indian proverb" by Forbes[1], but I think this is wrong because American Indians weren't monotheistic and wouldn't say that.
• "The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing" — attributed to Herbert Hoover. Source: quotefancy.com/quote/1022185/Herbert-Hoover-The-gods-do-not-deduct-from-man-s-allotted-span-the-hours-spent-in-fishing (unlinked due to spam filter); it is likely he actually did say that because he was known as an avid fisherman (an entire book was written about it), but was he the first?
  • Other sources attribute this same wording to a "Babylonian proverb".[2][3]
• "The gods do not subtract from the alloted span of men's lives the hours spent in fishing" — claimed to be an Assyrian proverb by a stock photo provider.[4]

The variations in wording make it difficult to search for origins. I have doubts about the Assyrian or Babylonian proverbs unless the aphorism appears in ancient written texts, but searching Google Scholar didn't turn up anything. Anachronist (talk) 20:02, 26 July 2022 (UTC)