Tracing Quotations
Oscar Wilde? CosmoGIRL? L. G. McVean? William J. Locke? Elizabeth Cooper? Holiday Mathis? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: There is a popular saying about the intimate connection between people who are in love that has been attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde. The closeness is expressed using an auditory metaphor: You don’t love …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Lovers: They Sing a Song Only You Can Hear”
Oscar Wilde? Gustave Flaubert? Robert H. Sherard? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: A famous writer who was punctilious about punctuation described an arduous day of work as follows: I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out. In some versions of the anecdote the operations were reversed: I spent all …
George Bernard Shaw? Oscar Wilde? Irvin Cobb? Michel de Montaigne? John Brunner? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: A very popular acerbic adage combines wisdom and wistfulness together with a modicum of jealousy: Youth is wasted on the young. These words have been attributed to two famous Irish wits: George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Oddly, …
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Oscar Wilde? Richard Le Gallienne? Reverend Sydney Smith? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: One of the more outrageous remarks attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde concerned missionaries, cannibals, and the supply of food. Did Wilde really make this facetious remark? Reply from Quote Investigator: Oscar Wilde died in 1900, and the earliest evidence located …
Oscar Wilde? G. K. Chesterton? H. L. Mencken? Sebastian Melmoth? Question for Quote Investigator: The following cryptic paradox has been attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde: Life is too important to be taken seriously. Yet, I have not found this statement in Wilde’s plays or essays. Would you please examine its provenance? Reply from …
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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”
Oscar Wilde? Ann Landers? Gershon Legman? Anonymous? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: In 1882 the coruscating wit Oscar Wilde came to the United States to see the country and to conduct a series of lectures. When he visited the Niagara Falls, a classic honeymoon destination, he was unimpressed. Here are two variants of a saying …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Niagara Falls: The First Great Disappointment in Married Life”
Orson Welles? Oscar Wilde? James Aswell? Richard Lederer? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The influence of William Shakespeare’s works on the English language has been enormous; consider the following phrases: To thine own self be trueIt was Greek to meBrevity is the soul of witTo be, or not to beNot a mouse stirring The cultural …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Now We Sit Through Shakespeare in Order to Recognize the Quotations”
Oscar Wilde? G. K. Chesterton? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I saw the following remark on the webpage of an educator: Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace. The phrase was attributed to Oscar Wilde, but I have not been able to find it in his oeuvre. It was listed on websites like Goodreads …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Art, Like Morality, Consists of Drawing the Line Somewhere”
Erica Jong? Oscar Wilde? Robert Webster Jones? H. L. Mencken? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: As a single person I enjoy the following joke about bigamy. Here are two versions: (1) Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same. (2) Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. The …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Bigamy Is Having One Spouse Too Many. Monogamy Is the Same”