Don Marquis? Christopher Morley? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Crafting a bright witticism or a clever aphorism is a difficult task especially for a writer who is facing a tight deadline. One strategy is described as follows: Stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram. This remark has been ascribed to Don Marquis who …
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Quote Origin: I Don’t Pay Them To Come Over; I Pay Them To Go Away
Charlie Sheen? Don Simpson? Dashiell Hammett? Adela Rogers St. Johns? Clark Gable? Charles Fleming? Stephen J. Cannell? Susan Kelly? Germaine Greer? Ian Ayres? Joy Fielding? Jack Nicholson? Question for Quote Investigator: Attractive, wealthy, and famous people sometimes obtain intimate services via the underground commercial market. This behavior is surprising because these individuals should be able …
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Quote Origin: All Comedy Is Tragedy, If You Only Look Deep Enough Into It
Thomas Hardy? John Ruskin? William Stearns Davis? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Comedy and tragedy are sometimes intertwined. The prominent English novelist Thomas Hardy has received credit for the following remark: Comedy is tragedy, if you only look deep enough. This statement has also been ascribed to the influential English art critic John Ruskin. Would …
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Quote Origin: The Words Have Just Crawled Down My Sleeve and Come Out On the Page
Joan Baez? Phillip L. Berman? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: An artist who is crafting a powerful song, poem, or story may feel a lack of control. The mind and body are simply operating as a channel for the emergence of the work. A songwriter once made this point by saying something like: The lyrics …
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Quote Origin: Whoever First Ate an Oyster Was a Brave Soul
Jonathan Swift? Benjamin Franklin? Shirley Chisholm? Thomas Moffett? John Ward? King James I of England? Thomas Fuller? John Gay? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: During a commencement address I heard the following vivid advice offered to students: Be as bold as the first man or woman to eat an oyster. Apparently, the famous Irish literary …
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Quote Origin: In the Short-Run, the Market Is a Voting Machine, But in the Long-Run, the Market Is a Weighing Machine
Benjamin Graham? Warren Buffett? Ronald A. McEachern? Ben Bidwell? John C. Bogle? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: A brilliant metaphorical framework for understanding the stock market can be summarized with the following cogent remark: In the short-run, the stock market is a voting machine. Yet, in the long-run, it is a weighing machine. Each purchase …
Quote Origin: A Woman Has To Be Twice as Good as a Man To Go Half as Far
Fannie Hurst? Charlotte Whitton? Joan Lowell? Jack Lewis? Lewis Browne? Myrtelle L. Gunsul? Lilias F. Evans? Anna Judge Vetters Levy? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Fannie Hurst was a popular novelist who was born in 1885. She believed that women faced greater obstacles to professional success than men. Apparently, she employed the following expression: A …
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Quote Origin: The Test of a First-Rate Intelligence Is the Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas in the Mind at the Same Time
F. Scott Fitzgerald? Lionel Trilling? Katherine A. Powers? H. Maynard Smith? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Our experiences in the world are often complex, ambiguous, and ill-defined. We must be able to accommodate conflicting hypotheses. Here is a pertinent adage: The truest sign of intelligence is the ability to entertain two contradictory ideas simultaneously. A …
Dialogue Origin: “Films Should Have a Beginning, a Middle, and an End” “Yes, But Not Necessarily in That Order”
Jean-Luc Godard? Aristotle? Peter Dickinson? George W. Feinstein? Eugenia Thornton? Chris Haws? David Mamet? Question for Quote Investigator: An iconoclastic French film director once commented on the narrative structure of a story. The auteur believed that it was not necessary for a tale to be recounted using the conventional ordering for the beginning, the middle, …
Quote Origin: An Idea Isn’t Responsible for the People Who Believe In It
Don Marquis? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: One strategy for attacking an idea is to exhibit a repugnant individual who supports the idea. This method can influence the opinions of those who are susceptible to psychological manipulation, but it is logically flawed. Here is a pertinent adage: An idea isn’t responsible for the people who …
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