He that is always shooting must sometimes hit. [source]
Question: Is He correct?
A Japanese teacher of English says that it is not normal to use "he" as the antecedent of a relative pronoun, but I suspect that "he" is possible when it refers to a generic person. Even if He is correct, "One" might be better because it is gender-neutral.
That example sentence is fine. Compare to the instruction from the Bible in John 8:7, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
But that biblical quote is from the King James translation, which is three hundred years old. To modern English speakers, your example would be more naturally expressed as He who is always shooting must sometimes hit. And the use of the masculine to mean anyone of any gender is far, far less a convention than it was even one century ago. So yes, One who is always shooting… might be better still.
But… he who does remain common in at least a few aphorisms. I have not yet encountered any reworking of He who hesitates is lost.
As @JamesK writes, your example is in a fairly formal style that would not be commonly used in everyday speech… unless, for example, it’s in an aphorism. That’s a context in which that kind of formal (old-fashioned) style can be appropriate because the style itself implicitly helps communicate that the utterance is indeed an aphorism.
It is highly formal in style, and so not common in general speech. If you were talking, or even if you were writing something you'd not normally say this. Instead you'd use a general noun like "People who are always shooting...". Or you could use a conditional "If someone is always shooting,..."
There are problems using "he" to mean "a general person" (since it seems to exclude "she"). So it is correct English, but I'd advise learners not to copy this example.
That sentence is correct, though that structure sounds either highly formal, dated, or intended to sound dated.
Merriam-Webster's definition of "he" itself includes a relative clause with "he" as the antecedent of a relative pronoun:
2 —> used in a generic sense or when the gender of the person is unspecified
he that hath ears to hear, let him hear
The example sentence is over 400 years old, and just about every other example that comes to mind is a similarly old adage.
The modern way to express this is "One who..."
