Washington Irving – Quote Investigator®

I Really Don’t Mind What People Do, So Long As They Don’t Do It In the Street and Frighten the Horses

Mrs. Patrick Campbell? Beatrice Stella Tanner? Helen Maud Tree? Oscar Wilde? Linkum Fidelius? Washington Irving? Alice Roosevelt Longworth? Eric Erskine Wood? Mrs. Claude Beddington? Frances Ethel Beddington? John Moore? King Edward VII? Ronald Reagan? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Enforcing societal norms and taboos is an important activity for some people. Others hesitate to proscribe conduct. …

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Quote Origin: Even a Stopped Clock Is Right Twice a Day

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach? Lewis Carroll? Charles L. Dodgson? Joseph Addison? Richard Steele? Diedrich Knickerbocker? Washington Irving? Albany de Grenier Fonblanque? Paulo Coelho? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: An obtuse, unreliable, or incompetent person occasionally performs properly. Here are three versions of a proverb reflecting this observation: This saying has been attributed to the prominent Austrian …

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When I Want to Read a Book, I Write One

Benjamin Disraeli? Washington Irving? Dear Quote Investigator: Recently, I was reading the top-selling book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” and encountered this sentence:[ref] 2007, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Page 95, Random House, New York. (Verified with Amazon Look Inside)[/ref] Nero did not …

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