Tracing Quotations
William James? Dorothy Parker? Ogden Nash? Mrs. Amos Pinchot? Alice Duer Miller? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I read a wild story about William James, the prominent psychologist, educator, and philosopher. One night he experimented with the psychoactive gas nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas. While experiencing a reverie James became convinced that he …
Continue reading “Hogamous, Higamous, Man is Polygamous, Higamous, Hogamous, Woman is Monagamous”
George Bernard Shaw? Winston Churchill? Randolph Churchill? Noel Coward? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The sharpest example of repartee that I have ever heard about was a famous exchange between George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill about a pair of tickets to a play. Shaw: I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my …
Continue reading “Here are Two Tickets for the Opening of My Play. Bring a Friend—If You Have One”
Mark Twain? Heinrich Heine? Otto von Bismarck? George Bernard Shaw? James Boswell? Will Rogers? Dear Quote Investigator: As a one-time resident of Cincinnati I knew that Mark Twain once worked in the city, and I always enjoyed the comment he reportedly made about it: When the end of the world comes, I want to be …
Ulysses S. Grant? Rutherford B. Hayes? Howard Pew? George Peck? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A quotation about the telephone has been in the news recently because it was used in a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama. A widely-distributed anecdote asserted that Rutherford B. Hayes participated in a demonstration of the telephone when it was …
Continue reading “Great Invention, But Who Would Ever Want to Use One?”
Samuel Goldwyn? Ezra Goodman? Robert Gessner? Dear Quote Investigator: The supply of comical lines credited to the Hollywood chief Samuel Goldwyn seems endless. Here is one that I love: I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead. But I have become rather skeptical of these jokes because no one seems to …
Continue reading ““Will You Write an Autobiography?” “Not Until Long After I’m Dead””
Cary Grant? Mary Astor? Hugh O’Brian? Danny Doakes? Herschel Bernardi? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I read an article last year about celebrity lookalikes that discussed the different stages of a Hollywood career. I remember a few of the stages: Get me John/Jane Smith. Get me someone who looks like John/Jane Smith. Who is John/Jane Smith. …
J. K. Rowling? Lord Chesterfield? Sirius Black? Charles Bayard Miliken? M. C. B. Mason? Dear Quote Investigator: My favorite quotation from the entire Harry Potter series was the brilliantly insightful remark spoken by the character Sirius Black: If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his …
Continue reading “If You Want to Know What a Man’s Like, Look at How He Treats His Inferiors”
George Bernard Shaw? Winston Churchill? Groucho Marx? Max Aitken? Mark Twain? W. C. Fields? Bertrand Russell? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a famous story about sex and money that I have heard in myriad variations. A man asks a woman if she would be willing to sleep with him if he pays her an exorbitant …
Walter Winchell? Michael Todd? Rose Bigman? Helene Hanff? Richard Rodgers? Dear Quote Investigator: The most famous review in Broadway history is also the most controversial, and I hope you can help solve the following mystery. In 1943 a hardworking theater group in New Haven, Connecticut was trying to prepare a major musical so that it …
Samuel Goldwyn? Michael Curtiz? Sheilah Graham? Jones? Scones? Louis Cukela? Fictional? Dear Quote Investigator: There is an unintentionally hilarious remark credited to the movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. He sent an assistant on an important errand and was angry when the task was badly botched. In exasperation Goldwyn created this classic rebuke: The next time I …
Continue reading “The Next Time I Send a Damn Fool for Something, I Go Myself”