Tracing Quotations
Mark Twain? Lyman Beecher Stowe? Apocryphal? Dear 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 provides …
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Mark Twain? Elbert Hubbard? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Mark Twain followed two thoughtful guidelines regarding smoking: Never smoke more than one cigar at a time. Never smoke while sleeping. Would you please determine when he enunciated these rules? Quote Investigator: In 1905 Mark Twain celebrated his seventieth birthday at the popular New York restaurant Delmonico’s. …
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Steve Jobs? Andy Hertzfeld? Nicholas Callaway? Apocryphal? Dear 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? Quote Investigator: Andy Hertzfeld …
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? Dear 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 as …
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Haim G. Ginott? Apocryphal? Dear 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 to …
Robert Overton? Anonymous? Dear 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? Quote Investigator: Robert Overton published “Ten Minutes: Holiday Yarns and Recitations” as a Christmas …
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Creator: Edmund Wilson, influential twentieth-century American critic Context: This quotation is the title of an article by Edmund Wilson published in “The New Yorker” magazine in 1945.[1]1945 January 20, The New Yorker, Books: Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: A Second Report on Detective Fiction by Edmund Wilson, Start Page 59, Quote Page 59, F. …
Rebecca West? Virginia Woolf? Nelson Goodman? Noam Chomsky? Vita Sackville-West? Apocryphal? Dear 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: One …