Tracing Quotations
Evan Esar? Jacob M. Braude? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: You have already explored a quip about success and work that cleverly referred to their alphabetical order. I’ve seen a similar joke about divorce and marriage: The dictionary is the only place where divorce comes before marriage. Which of these two jests emerged first? Would you …
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Jacob M. Braude? Robert Byrne? Sally’s Sallies? Mary Pettibone Poole? Bob Burns? Jimmie Fidler? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I love terrible puns and the following is a great example: Most love triangles are wrecktangles. The quotation collector Robert Byrne included this statement in “The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said” with an attribution to …
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