Tracing Quotations
Mark Twain? Lyman Beecher Stowe? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The following eccentric dietary advice has been attributed to the famous humorist Mark Twain: Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside. I question whether Twain said this because no one …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Eat Whatever You Like and Let Them Fight It Out Inside”
Mark Twain? Elbert Hubbard? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Mark Twain followed two thoughtful guidelines regarding smoking: Would you please determine when he enunciated these rules? Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1905 Mark Twain celebrated his seventieth birthday at the popular New York restaurant Delmonico’s. The participants delivered numerous speeches and poems lauding Twain as …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: I Have Made It a Rule Never To Smoke More Than One Cigar at a Time”
Steve Jobs? Andy Hertzfeld? Nicholas Callaway? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Developing and releasing a complicated product like a personal computer is an arduous task. Prominent business executive Steve Jobs employed the following adage to motivate the group designing the innovative Macintosh computer: Real Artists Ship Would you please explore this saying? Reply from Quote …
Samuel Johnson? Robert Gordis? Francis Bacon? Morris Raphael Cohen? Mordecai M. Kaplan? Benjamin Jowett? Question for Quote Investigator: While I was a student a few decades ago I came across a remarkable metaphysical expression that was similar to the following: The search for knowledge will lead a person away from God, and then back toward …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: It Is Not Quite the Same God to Which One Returns”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Thomas Carlyle? Mary Shelley? Percy Bysshe Shelley? Thomas S. Monson? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: There is a family of sayings ascribed to the prominent German literary figure Goethe. Here are two instances in the family: If you treat people as they are, they will become worse. If you treat them …
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Haim G. Ginott? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The major German literary figure Goethe has received credit for a passage that begins: I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. I have not found any solid ascriptions …
Robert Overton? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The question and answer of the following exasperating riddle appear to be nonsensical: Question: Why is a mouse when it spins?Answer: The higher, the fewer. Would you please examine the provenance of this conundrum? Reply from Quote Investigator: Robert Overton published “Ten Minutes: Holiday Yarns and Recitations” as …
Edmund Wilson? Agatha Christie? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The following acerbic remark has been used to dismiss the entire mystery genre as trivial and uninteresting: Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd? Would you please help me to find a citation for this remark? Reply from Quote Investigator: This interrogative statement is the title of …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?”
Rebecca West? Virginia Woolf? Nelson Goodman? Noam Chomsky? Vita Sackville-West? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Quantum mechanics has an interpretation that envisions many worlds. Also, modal logic has a semantics that features many possible worlds. Yet, the expansive idea of many universes or worlds has waggish detractors. One comical response to this plenteous philosophy states: …