Celebrity Is the Chastisement of Merit and the Punishment of Talent

Nicolas Chamfort? Emily Dickinson? Franz Liszt? Garrison Keillor? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The dark side of celebrity is now widely recognized. Celebrity worship encourages self-absorption, arrogance, and callousness while celebrity hatred causes denouncements, calumnies, and physical endangerment. The following saying has been attributed to the eighteenth century French epigrammatist Nicolas Chamfort and the nineteenth century …

The Possible’s Slow Fuse Is Lit By the Imagination!

Emily Dickinson? Susan Gilbert Dickinson? Martha Dickinson Bianchi? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The ability to envision something novel and appealing is vital to the formulation and accomplishment of worthwhile goals. A robust imagination initiates the process. The poet Emily Dickinson employed the apt metaphor of lighting a fuse to express this notion. Would you please …

We Turn Not Older With Years, But Newer Every Day

Creator: Emily Dickinson, prominent U.S. poet Context: The quotation occurred within a letter from Dickinson dated 1874 that appeared in a collection of missives published posthumously in 1894. The letter was sent to a cousin who was not named. Emphasis added to this excerpt:[1]1894, Letters of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, Volume 2 …