Sentence examples similar to plainly confess from inspiring English sources
Even Lincoln famously admitted, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events controlled me".
In candour he would write: "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me".
"I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events controlled me," Lincoln said in 1864.
Some admire Gove's free-spirited willingness to try out ideas, and then ditch them; his willingness to confess plainly to the Commons that he had gone "a bridge too far" was certainly refreshing.
We don't expect a President to say that he is a man "without a name, perhaps without a reason why I should have a name," or to "confess plainly that events have controlled me" rather than the other way around.
Recent historians have pointed to Lincoln's fatalistic, impersonal style as evidence, in David Donald's words, of "the essential passivity of his nature," the trait of character that made him say in a letter in early 1864, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me".
