Tracing Quotations
Dear Quotation Investigator: I once read that the funniest book review ever written begins with the sentence: “This book fills a much-needed gap”. Does this book review actually exist? QI: Remarkably, the phrase mentioned does appear in many book reviews and other evaluations. For years writers have been incongruously eager to praise the filling of …
Continue reading “This Post Fills a Much-Needed Gap – Part 01”
Dear Quote Investigator: There is a great quote by Plato or Socrates about the misbehavior of children in antiquity that I read in the New York Times. The quote shows that the problems between generations are not just a recent occurrence. Instead, the conflicts between parents and offspring are timeless [NY8]: The children now love …
Charles Dickens? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: In a book on corporate communications I read a quote that supposedly was said by Dickens:[1] 2007, Essentials of Corporate Communication by C. B. M. van Riel and Charles J. Fombrun, Page 181, Routledge. (Google Books limited view) link Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face …
Mark Twain? Charles Dudley Warner? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a classic Mark Twain quotation about the weather that I have used for years. Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. However, recently I visited the Bartleby website and discovered that the reference work Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations says …
Continue reading “Everybody Talks About the Weather, But Nobody Does Anything About It.”
Have you ever enjoyed reading or hearing a clever quotation? Have you ever repeated the quote along with the attribution but wondered if the information was accurate? This blog tries to track down correct information about the provenance of sayings by utilizing the massive text databases that are being constructed right now along with other …