Tracing Quotations
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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Locale: San Francisco, California? Paris, France? Duluth, Minnesota? Milwaukee, Wisconsin? Originator: Mark Twain? Horace Walpole? James Quin? R. Q. Grant? Lord Byron? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Living in Menlo Park near San Francisco I have heard the following witticism credited to Mark Twain many times: The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in …
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Mark Twain? H. Jackson Brown? Sarah Frances Brown? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The Virgin Galactic company of Richard Branson plans to offer suborbital spaceflights for tourists. The organization put together a beautiful brochure containing the following quotation credited to Mark Twain:[1]Virgin Galactic website at virgingalactic.com, Link on homepage for Downloadable Brochure describing suborbital space flights. …