Tracing Quotations
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 …
Charles Lamb? Théophile Gautier? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: When I was choosing a major in college, people would ask me what I wished to do in life. I am somewhat indolent; hence, the following response reflects my underlying beliefs: The best thing to have to do is nothing. I usually did not share this thought …
Continue reading “Positively, The Best Thing a Person Can Have To Do Is Nothing”
Oscar Wilde? Gustave Flaubert? Robert H. Sherard? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A famous writer who was punctilious about punctuation described an arduous day of work as follows: I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out. In some versions of the anecdote the operations were reversed: I spent all morning …
Continue reading “I Spent All Morning Taking Out a Comma and All Afternoon Putting It Back”
Martin Luther King Jr.? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: While reading about the economics of health care I came across the following statement attributed to the famous civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.: Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. A writer at “The Huffington Post” …