Tracing Quotations
James Thurber? Jane Austen? Charles Caleb Colton? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Many are familiar with the following adage which encourages aggregation: There is safety in numbers. Yet, I recall reading a short acerbic tale that presented an inverted moral of this type: There is no safety in numbers, or anything else. Would you please …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: There Is No Safety In Numbers, Or In Anything Else”
Steele MacKaye? Dion Boucicault? W. S. Gilbert? Sanford B. Hooker? David Belasco? Daniel Frohman? William M. Tanner? Walter Winchell? James Thurber? Michael Crichton? Question for Quote Investigator: A magnificent work of art emerges in its final form like Venus from a scallop shell; no modifications are required according to one unrealistic approach to creativity. Numerous …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Plays Are Not Written—They Are Rewritten”
George Bernard Shaw? Otto Penzler? James Thurber? Harold Ross? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Reportedly, George Bernard Shaw once presented an idiosyncratic list of the three most famous individuals: Jesus Christ, Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Houdini. Did Shaw really put forward this triptych? Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence known to QI appeared in …
Henry Kissinger? M. Z. Remsburg? James Thurber? Ann Landers? Robert Orben? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: There is a joke about the uneasy relationship between the sexes that has been told for decades: Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy. In the 1970s this statement was …