Tracing Quotations
Mark Twain? John Wesley? John M. Bartholomew? Arthur Twining Hadley? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Lengthy orations on spiritual topics are unlikely to change the views of resistant audience members. Here are three versions of a pertinent adage: Few sinners are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon. Few souls are saved after the …
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Mark Twain? Richard Branson? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The following comical remark reassures neophyte speakers that their anxious feelings are universal: There are only two types of speakers: (1) the nervous (2) the liars. This quip is usually attributed to the famous humorist Mark Twain, but I cannot find a solid citation, and I have …
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Mark Twain? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Recently, I encountered an insightful quotation about courage attributed to Mark Twain that I had not seen before: Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, and not the absence of fear. Is this a genuine Twain quotation? Where did it appear? Quote Investigator: In December 1893 Mark Twain …
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Ernest Hemingway? Mark Twain? Luke McLuke? Lydia DeVilbiss? Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.? Frederick B. Wilcox? Abigail Van Buren? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: While searching the twitter database I encountered the following two similar jokes: (1) Humans need two years to learn to speak and sixty years to learn to shut up. …
Mark Twain? Josh Billings? Henry Wheeler Shaw? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Writing well requires the selection of properly expressive words. There is an enormous difference between selecting ‘lightning bug’ versus ‘lightning’. Apparently, Mark Twain said something similar to this, but I was surprised to discover that Twain credited his friend Josh Billings with crafting the …
Albert Einstein? Ray Cummings? Mark Twain? Arthur C. Clarke? John Archibald Wheeler? Arthur Power Dudden? Susan Sontag? Dear Quote Investigator: Albert Einstein has received credit for a humorous remark about time: The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. Would you please explore the provenance of this quip? Quote Investigator: …
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Mark Twain? Horace Greeley? N. D. Hillis? Dear Quote Investigator: Two interesting quotations begin with the same phrases but diverge to emphasize different ideas of impermanence: Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today will curse …
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Oscar Wilde? Mark Twain? Frank Fiest? Will Rogers? Walter Armstrong? Herman Lindauer? William M. Lewis? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: What do the following musical instruments have in common: cornet, ukulele, saxophone, bagpipes, accordion, and banjo? Each of these instruments has a distinctive sound that is unpleasant to some listeners providing inspiration for a family of …
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Dorothy Parker? Tallulah Bankhead? Edith Gwynn? Roy Blount Jr.? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The 1948 war novel “The Naked and the Dead” by Norman Mailer employed the euphemism “fug” (“fugged”, “fugging”) instead of the four-letter word for intercourse. According to a popular literary legend, a witty woman who was introduced to Mailer shortly after the …
Mark Twain? Clara Clemens? Justin Kaplan? Harlan Ellison? Darrell Schweitzer? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Famous author Mark Twain was grief-stricken when his daughter Susy died at age 24. The following expression of bitter despair has been ascribed to him: If there is a God, he is a malign thug. Oddly, no one has presented a …