Tracing Quotations
Josh Billings? Artemus Ward? Will Rogers? Abraham Lincoln? Mark Twain? Friedrich Nietzsche? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Here are two versions of an expression I am trying to trace: 1) It’s better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so. 2) It is better not to know so much, than to know so many things …
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Theodore Roosevelt? Albert Einstein? Benjamin Franklin? Samuel Smiles? Josh Billings? Mr. Phelps? G. K. Chesterton? Robert Smith Surtees? Joseph Conrad? Will Rogers? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Mistakes are unavoidable in the life of an active and vital person. Several adages highlight this important theme: 1) A man who never makes a mistake will never make …
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Mark Twain? Oscar Wilde? Josh Billings? Spanish Proverb? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Everyone is guilty of some procrastination. Even the industrious humorist Mark Twain was credited with a quotation sympathetic to the indolent: Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow. Puzzlingly, this same quip has been ascribed to the …
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Josh Billings? Josh Weathersby? Cal Stewart? Ring Lardner? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Individuals who complain often receive the most attention. There is a popular analogy about squeaky wheels that I think has been incorrectly attributed to the humorist Josh Billings who was a famous lecturer in the 1800s. (Billings was the pseudonym of Henry Wheeler …