Tracing Quotations
Florence Kerns? Ray Hallinan? Herb Caen? Pauline Tymon? Larry Pickard? David Crosby? Joe Bob Briggs? Al Franken? Stuart Smalley? Anonymous? Question for 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 …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Denial Is Not a River in Egypt”
Mark Twain? Merle Johnson? Apocryphal? Question for 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 …
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 …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter”
Mark Twain? Heinrich Heine? Otto von Bismarck? George Bernard Shaw? James Boswell? Will Rogers? Question for 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 …
George Bernard Shaw? Winston Churchill? Groucho Marx? Max Aitken? Mark Twain? W. C. Fields? Bertrand Russell? Question for 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 …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Now We’re Just Haggling Over the Price”
Mark Twain? Chauncey Depew? Ring Lardner? William Allen White? Winston Churchill? Big Jim Watson? Joseph Hodges Choate? Anonymous? Question for 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 …
Locale: San Francisco, California? Paris, France? Duluth, Minnesota? Milwaukee, Wisconsin? Originator: Mark Twain? Horace Walpole? James Quin? R. Q. Grant? Lord Byron? Anonymous? Question for 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 …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: The Coldest Winter I Ever Spent Was a Summer in San Francisco”
Mark Twain? H. Jackson Brown? Sarah Frances Brown? Apocryphal? Question for 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: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you …
Mark Twain? Ben Wade? Emery A. Storrs? James Matthew Barrie? Robert Burton? Question for Quote Investigator: There is a well-known quotation about heaven and hell that is usually credited to Mark Twain. I have found it phrased in different ways: My friend is adamant that the quotation was really created by James M. Barrie, the …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Heaven for the Climate, and Hell for the Company”
Mark Twain? James Wayle? Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar? Walter Winchell? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: In the past few days several phony quotations were widely disseminated on the internet; in other words, they went viral. My question is about a saying that might be genuine. A CNN article contains the following expression attributed to Mark Twain: …