Tracing Quotations
Charlie Chaplin? Nigel Bruce? Claire Bloom? Austin Kleon? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Before performing a new show or displaying a novel artwork it is natural to feel fear. Perhaps the audience will condemn you as an amateur. A famous comic actor crafted a brilliant remark about amateurism. It went something like this: Everyone is an …
Continue reading “That’s All Any of Us Are: Amateurs. We Don’t Live Long Enough To Be Anything Else”
Jean-Luc Godard? D. W. Griffith? Evelyn D. Miller? Frederick James Smith? George W. Sears? John Philip Sousa? Abel Gance? Fredric Wertham? Charlie Chaplin? John Boorman? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A powerful and jaded film director once listed the two crucial ingredients to achieve success: All you need for a movie is a girl and a …
Continue reading “All You Need To Make a Movie Is a Girl and a Gun”
Charlie Chaplin? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The cinema icon Charlie Chaplin depicted comic and tragic situations in his films, and he also experienced both in his personal life. One of his memorable quotations metaphorically employed the film director terms closeup and longshot to contrast tragedy and comedy. Would you help me to find a citation …
Continue reading “Life is a Tragedy when Seen in Closeup, But a Comedy in Longshot”
Charlie Chaplin? Albert Einstein? János Plesch? Hans Albert Einstein? Eduard Einstein? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The entertainer Charlie Chaplin and the scientist Albert Einstein were two of the most famous individuals of the last century. I have heard the following anecdote about a meeting between them in the 1930s. While traveling together they were …
Charlie Chaplin? Steve Martin? Groucho Marx? Nicolas Chamfort? Dear Quote Investigator: The following guideline for living makes sense to me, so I try to find humor in something every day: A day without laughter is a day wasted When I read this maxim originally it was credited to Charlie Chaplin, but I once heard it …