Tracing Quotations
Dwight D. Eisenhower? Gerald Ford? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: President Dwight D. Eisenhower is commonly credited with making a comical statement that is almost a tautology. Here are a few different versions of his supposed remark: Things are more like they are right now than they ever have been. Things are more like they are …
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Ernest Hemingway? William R. Kane? Roy K. Moulton? Avery Hopwood? Arthur C. Clarke? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Most people are familiar with short stories, but there is another class of works that might be called short-short stories. “Flash fiction” and “sudden fiction” are labels that are applied to this style of literature. One of the …
Stephen Wright? Ernst Berg? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I am trying to discover where the following maxim comes from: The second mouse gets the cheese. Sometimes this phrase appears as part of a longer saying: The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Quote …
Amish Saying? Ralph Waldo Emerson? Native American Proverb? Wendell Berry? Oscar Wilde? Chief Seattle? Moses Henry Cass? Dennis J. Hall? Helen Caldicott? Lester Brown? David R. Brower? Taghi Farvar? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: In my opinion the most thoughtful and poignant quotation about the environment is the following: We do not inherit the earth from …
Continue reading “We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children”
George Orwell? Alfred Harmsworth? William Randolph Hearst? L. E. Edwardson? Robert W. Sawyer? Mark Rhea Byers? Brian R. Roberts? Malcolm Muggeridge? Katharine Graham? Lord Rothermere? Lord Northcliffe? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I have been trying to trace a popular saying about journalism which can be expressed in several ways. Here are four examples to show …
Continue reading “News Is What Somebody Does Not Want You To Print. All the Rest Is Advertising”
Mark Twain? Oscar Wilde? Josh Billings? Spanish Proverb? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Everyone is guilty of some procrastination. Even the industrious humorist Mark Twain was credited with a quotation sympathetic to the indolent: Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow. Puzzlingly, this same quip has been ascribed to the …
Continue reading “Never Put Off Till Tomorrow What You Can Do The Day After Tomorrow Just As Well”
King George II? Duke of Newcastle? Joe Miller? James Wolfe? Dear Quote Investigator: When George II of Great Britain was planning to send General James Wolfe on a military expedition to Canada his close advisor told him that Wolfe was a poor selection for such an important assignment because he was a madman. The King …
Continue reading “I Hope He Will Bite My Other Generals and Make Them Mad, Too”
Margot Asquith? Margot Grahame? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: According to a Hollywood legend there was a pointed verbal encounter between the movie siren Jean Harlow and the sharp-tongued English aristocrat Margot Asquith. When Harlow attended a party given by Asquith, the movie star presumptuously referred to the hostess by her first name, and she repeatedly …
Ralph Waldo Emerson? Lao Tzu? Frank Outlaw? Gautama Buddha? Bishop Beckwaith? Father of Margaret Thatcher? Dear Quote Investigator: What do the following people have in common: Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, supermarket magnate Frank Outlaw, spiritual teacher Gautama Buddha, and the father of Margaret Thatcher? Each one of these individuals has been …
Continue reading “Watch Your Thoughts, They Become Words; Watch Your Words, They Become Actions”
Herbert Beerbohm Tree? Frederick Henry Townsend? George du Maurier? Yogi Berra? Mutt and Jeff? An inebriate? A woman carrying packages? Dear Quote Investigator: I have read several instances of a popular comical anecdote. Two different versions featured baseball Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra. One night he was presented with a grandfather clock at a banquet dinner. Yogi …
Continue reading “Why Don’t You Carry a Wrist Watch Like Everyone Else?”