Groucho Marx? Ethel Barrymore? Maurice Barrymore? Paul M. Potter? Gertrude Battles Lane? John Lennon? Joe E. Lewis? Robert Heinlein? Marilyn Manson? Augustus John? Oscar Wilde? Dear Quote Investigator: There is well-known and often repeated admonition directed at young people who are making too much noise: Children should be seen and not heard. Wordplay has produced …
Tag Archives: Oscar Wilde
Lovers: They Sing a Song Only You Can Hear
Oscar Wilde? CosmoGIRL? L. G. McVean? William J. Locke? Elizabeth Cooper? Holiday Mathis? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a popular saying about the intimate connection between people who are in love that has been attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde. The closeness is expressed using an auditory metaphor: You don’t love someone …
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I Spent All Morning Taking Out a Comma and All Afternoon Putting It Back
Oscar Wilde? Gustave Flaubert? Robert H. Sherard? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A famous writer who was punctilious about punctuation described an arduous day of work as follows: I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out. In some versions of the anecdote the operations were reversed: I spent all morning …
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Youth Is Wasted on the Young
George Bernard Shaw? Oscar Wilde? Irvin Cobb? Michel de Montaigne? John Brunner? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A very popular acerbic adage combines wisdom and wistfulness together with a modicum of jealousy: Youth is wasted on the young. These words have been attributed to two famous Irish wits: George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Oddly, I …
Missionaries and Cannibals
Oscar Wilde? Richard Le Gallienne? Reverend Sydney Smith? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: One of the more outrageous remarks attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde concerned missionaries, cannibals, and the supply of food. Did Wilde really make this facetious remark? Quote Investigator: Oscar Wilde died in 1900, and the earliest evidence located by QI appeared …
Life Is Too Important To Be Taken Seriously
Oscar Wilde? G. K. Chesterton? H. L. Mencken? Sebastian Melmoth? Dear Quote Investigator: The following cryptic paradox has been attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde: Life is too important to be taken seriously. Yet, I have not found this statement in Wilde’s plays or essays. Would you please examine its provenance? Quote Investigator: Oscar …
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A Gentleman Is a Man Who Never Gives Offense Unintentionally
Oscar Wilde? Margaret Butler? Geraldine Grove? Lord Chesterfield? John Wayne? Christopher Hitchens? John Cleese? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Books of etiquette once provided a definition of a gentleman that included the following assertion: A gentleman never insults anyone intentionally. The clever addition of a two-letter prefix humorously spun the definition: A gentleman never insults anyone …
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Niagara Falls: The First Great Disappointment in Married Life
Oscar Wilde? Ann Landers? Gershon Legman? Anonymous? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: In 1882 the coruscating wit Oscar Wilde came to the United States to see the country and to conduct a series of lectures. When he visited the Niagara Falls, a classic honeymoon destination, he was unimpressed. Here are two variants of a saying that …
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Now We Sit Through Shakespeare in Order to Recognize the Quotations
Orson Welles? Oscar Wilde? James Aswell? Richard Lederer? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The influence of William Shakespeare’s works on the English language has been enormous; consider the following phrases: To thine own self be true It was Greek to me Brevity is the soul of wit To be, or not to be Not a mouse …
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Art, Like Morality, Consists of Drawing the Line Somewhere
Oscar Wilde? G. K. Chesterton? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I saw the following remark on the webpage of an educator: Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace. The phrase was attributed to Oscar Wilde, but I have not been able to find it in his oeuvre. It was listed on websites like Goodreads and …
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