Tracing Quotations
Miguel de Cervantes? Don Quixote? Sancho Panza? Euripides? Lord Chesterfield? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Joseph Hordern? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: If you are attempting to assess the character of an individual you can do it indirectly by identifying his or her friends and assessing their proclivities. Here are three versions of a pertinent saying: …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Tell Me What Company You Keep, and I Will Tell You What You Are”
Lord Chesterfield? Hilaire Belloc? D. H. Lawrence? George Bernard Shaw? Alexander Duffield? W. Somerset Maugham? Elliot Paul? Samuel Hopkins Adams? Benjamin Franklin? P. D. James? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Lord Chesterfield reportedly crafted an outrageously humorous description of intimate relations. I’ve seen different versions that each comment on pleasure, position, and expense. Yet, …
Oscar Wilde? Margaret Butler? Geraldine Grove? Lord Chesterfield? John Wayne? Christopher Hitchens? John Cleese? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Books of etiquette once provided a definition of a gentleman that included the following assertion: A gentleman never insults anyone intentionally. The clever addition of a two-letter prefix humorously spun the definition: A gentleman never insults …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: A Gentleman Is a Man Who Never Gives Offense Unintentionally”
J. K. Rowling? Lord Chesterfield? Sirius Black? Charles Bayard Miliken? M. C. B. Mason? Question for Quote Investigator: My favorite quotation from the entire Harry Potter series was the brilliantly insightful remark spoken by the character Sirius Black: If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats …