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English
Proverb
where there's a will there's a way
- Alternative form of where there is a will there is a way
1840 November, [Samuel] Laman Blanchard, “A Quarrel with Some Old Acquaintances”, in Theodore Hook, editor, The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, volume LX, 3rd part, number CCXXXIX, London: Henry Colburn, , →OCLC, section 10 (Where There’s a Will There’s a Way), page 408:The powerful and the fortunate are very fond of the maxim, "where there's a will there's a way;" and they rarely use it without expressing in very clear terms a cold, insolent, and uncharitable judgment upon exertions they are themselves not called upon to make, while they modestly declare that such exertions, if by them made, would be triumphant. They say, in sort, to the weak and unprosperous—You might succeed if you would, for effort is success, and we should find a certain and easy conquest where you have met but baffled hopes and continual defeat!
1866, W[illiam] K[ing] Tweedie, “James Ferguson. 1710–1776.”, in Youthful Diligence, Future Greatness: A Book for the Young, London, Edinburgh, New York, N.Y.: T Nelson and Sons, , →OCLC, pages 273–274:The account which he [James Ferguson] himself gives of these observations is exceedingly interesting, and strikingly brings out the ingenuity of his mind, and his determination to allow no difficulties of circumstances to stand in his way. [...] Thus we are reminded of the apothegm that where there's a will there's a way—an apothegm which has found illustration in every department of effort, but nowhere more frequently than in the progress of science and art.
1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter IV, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented , volume I, London: James R Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., , →OCLC, phase the first (The Maiden), pages 40–41:Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken village, could only boast of an off-license; [...] [T]hirsty strangers [...] wished they could have a restful seat inside. Thus the strangers. But there were also local customers who felt the same wish; and where there's a will there's a way. In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady Mrs. Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all seeking vinous bliss; [...]