Tracing Quotations
Shake? William Shakespeare? Mulleary? Goethe? Henry Cuyler Bunner? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: While studying English in school I heard the following humorous rhyme about The Bard of Avon: Shakespeare was a dramatist of note who lived by writing things to quote. These words are from a longer poem, but I have not been able to …
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Yogi Berra? Babe Herman? Department Store Sales Woman? Young Student? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: My favorite quotation from Yogi Berra was said when he was introduced to a beautiful model after a baseball game. She complimented him, and his fumbling reply was unintentionally funny: She said, “You look so nice and cool in that white …
Continue reading ““You Look Nice and Cool.” “Thanks! You Don’t Look So Hot Yourself.””
Yogi Berra? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: While looking through a book of baseball’s greatest quotations I came across this hilarious reply from Yogi Berra to someone who criticized his appearance: So I’m ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face. Some of the sayings credited to Yogi are bogus, but I hope …
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P. T. Barnum? Britney Spears? George Herbert? Jane Russell? W. Clement Stone? Ralph Waldo Emerson? Norman Vincent Peale? Les Brown? John McEnroe? Dear Quote Investigator: There exists a collection of sayings that uses celestial bodies to illustrate advice about setting goals. Here are three examples: If I shoot at the sun, I may hit a …
Martin Luther King? Barack Obama? Theodore Parker? Freemason Commander? Seth Brooks? Jacob Kohn? Dear Quote Investigator: Civil rights champion Martin Luther King, Jr. once delivered a powerful speech with this resonant line: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I was told that this metaphorical framework has a long …
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Yogi Berra? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: One of the cleverest jokes credited to Yogi Berra is meta-logical. Apparently, some people were following Yogi around and expecting him to utter one of his famous Yogi-isms. Finally, in exasperation he said: If I could just make ’em up on the spot, I’d be famous. This response is …
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Winston Churchill? Abba Eban? An Irishman? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: While watching a cable news channel I heard a commentator present a quotation that he credited to Winston Churchill. When I searched the web I found many different versions: (1) Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted …
Wilfred Thesiger? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Our local newspaper printed the following quotation and attribution: “The harder the life, the better the man,” the British desert explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger is popularly quoted as having said. Thesiger led an extraordinary life as an explorer and travel writer, and he left behind a large trove of …
Katharine Graham? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I enjoy reading your website and refer to it frequently. I’ve been trying to ascertain the origin of the following: To love what you do and feel that it matters, how could anything else be more fun? This quote is all over the place credited to Katharine Graham, but …
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Marilyn Monroe? Eleanor Roosevelt? Anne Boleyn? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Observing a stream of tweets is a confusing way to learn about a quotation: Well behaved women rarely make history – Marilyn Monroe Well-behaved women rarely make history – Eleanor Roosevelt Well behaved women rarely make history – Anne Boleyn Well behaved …