Tracing Quotations
Mark Twain? Edwin E. Slosson? Harry Lloyd Miller? Professor Rathburn? Mortimer J. Adler? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Mark Twain is credited with a very funny description of college lectures. For some teachers and students I think this quotation is accurate: College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture …
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Please note that contact information for this website is located on the “About” page. Some of the large databases of quotations that are readily available online are filled with misinformation. Typically no citations are provided to substantiate attributions. Here is a small set of useful resources that will guide you in the right direction: The …
Mark Twain? Robert Heinlein? A Schoolchild? Caroline B. Le Row? Andrew John Herbertson? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I am preparing a book about the weather and climate, and I would like to include the following quotation: The climate is what you expect; the weather is what you get. Several web sites attribute this remark to …
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Jimmy Durante? Edna Mae Oliver? Robert M. Hutchins? Chauncey Depew? Mark Twain? Paul Terry? Robert Benchley? Max Beerbohm? J. P. McEvoy? Dear Quote Investigator: The funniest quotation about exercise is usually credited to Mark Twain: Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes away. But this statement is also …
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Florence Kerns? Ray Hallinan? Herb Caen? Pauline Tymon? Larry Pickard? David Crosby? Joe Bob Briggs? Al Franken? Stuart Smalley? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The Saturday Night Live television program once featured skits with a character named Stuart Smalley who was played by the comedian and former senator Al Franken. Smalley was enamored with self-help programs …
Mark Twain? Merle Johnson? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Comments about stylish clothing always remind me of Mark Twain’s comment: Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society. But I cannot seem to find any direct reference for this quote. The best citation I have seen was dated more than fifteen …
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Blaise Pascal? John Locke? Benjamin Franklin? Henry David Thoreau? Cicero? Woodrow Wilson? Question for Quote Investigator: I was planning to end a letter with the following remark: If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. But the number of different people credited with this comment is so numerous that an explanatory …
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Mark Twain? Heinrich Heine? Otto von Bismarck? George Bernard Shaw? James Boswell? Will Rogers? Dear Quote Investigator: As a one-time resident of Cincinnati I knew that Mark Twain once worked in the city, and I always enjoyed the comment he reportedly made about it: When the end of the world comes, I want to be …
George Bernard Shaw? Winston Churchill? Groucho Marx? Max Aitken? Mark Twain? W. C. Fields? Bertrand Russell? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a famous story about sex and money that I have heard in myriad variations. A man asks a woman if she would be willing to sleep with him if he pays her an exorbitant …
Mark Twain? Chauncey Depew? Ring Lardner? William Allen White? Winston Churchill? Big Jim Watson? Joseph Hodges Choate? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: New Year’s resolutions often feature plans for more exercise. Mark Twain was once asked if he engaged in exercise, and he supposedly said: I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the …
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