Tracing Quotations
Jacob M. Braude? Robert Byrne? Sally’s Sallies? Mary Pettibone Poole? Bob Burns? Jimmie Fidler? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I love terrible puns and the following is a great example:[1] 2012, The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said by Robert Byrne, No Page Number, Quote Number 283, Touchstone: A Division of Simon & Schuster, New York. …
Continue reading “Love Triangles Generally Turn Out To Be Wrecktangles”
Abraham Lincoln? John W. Hulbert? Pious Clergyman? George Bradburn? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a famous riddle about the difference between a supposition and a fact: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. There are different …
Continue reading “Suppose You Call a Sheep’s Tail a Leg, How Many Legs Will the Sheep Have?”
Mark Twain? Will Rogers? Frank Scully? Arthur F. Lenehan? H. Jackson Brown? Mother of H. Jackson Brown? Shirley MacLaine? Dear Quote Investigator: To succeed one must be willing to take risks and to enter the precarious realm of punishments and accolades. Here are four versions of an expression that appears in many self-help books: 1) …
Continue reading “Why Not Go Out On a Limb? Isn’t That Where the Fruit Is?”
Abraham Lincoln? Traveler? John Randolph of Roanoke? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: According to legend when Abraham Lincoln was served a cup of unpalatable brew he made the following hilarious remark: If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee. I have not been able to …
Continue reading “If What You Gave Me Last Was Tea, I Want Coffee. If It Was Coffee, I Want Tea”
George Bernard Shaw? William Butler Yeats? Anonymous? H. W. Garrod? Lord Dunsany? Lytton Strachey? Question for Quote Investigator: While the First World War was raging an unhappy woman approached a famous British scholar and poet and rebuked him for not enlisting. She stated emphatically that young men were fighting and dying to defend civilization. Here …
Continue reading “I Am the Civilization You Are Fighting For”
Who was speaking: Walter F. Kerr? Michael Foot? Erskine Johnson? Charlton Heston? David Brin? Who was criticized: Jay Robinson? Dwight Eisenhower? Charlton Heston? Dear Quote Investigator: The complaint that someone is exhibiting “delusions of grandeur” has become a cliché. However, a clever modification of the phrase was memorably employed by a theater critic who was …
Zig Ziglar? C. S. Lewis? Carl Bard? James R. Sherman? Philadelphia Eagles Football Team? Barrie M. Tritie? Dennis Reinhart? Maria Robinson? Jessie Jones? Michael York? Dear Quote Investigator: Whenever I reach a dead-end or feel that I am stuck in a rut I can be re-energized by the following inspirational saying. Here are two versions: …
Continue reading “We Cannot Go Back and Start Over, But We Can Begin Now, and Make a New Ending”
Who Said It: Samuel Goldwyn? Mr. Jones? S. S. Van Dine? Joey Adams? Whispering Russian? Whose Funeral: Louis B. Mayer? Fogarty’s Brother? Joseph Stalin? W. Kerr Scott? Dear Quote Investigator: According to Hollywood legend when the tyrannical chief of a powerful movie studio died many were surprised to see that his funeral was well attended. …
Continue reading “The Crowd Came to the Funeral, Not To Mourn, But To Make Sure the Person Was Dead”
Dorothy Parker? Ellen Parr? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The following statement about curiosity has been attributed to the well-known wit Dorothy Parker and someone named Ellen Parr: The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. Would you please examine the provenance of this saying? Quote Investigator: The earliest instance of this …
Continue reading “The Cure for Boredom Is Curiosity. There Is No Cure for Curiosity”
Rebecca West? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The notable British author Rebecca West once wrote a brilliant comment about people talking without communicating. Her words have been included in several important reference compilations of quotations, but the situation is confusing because there are two different versions of her statement that differ by a single word. Boldface …