Tracing Quotations
Robert Benchley? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: When you hear your own words from the past recited to you as a quotation the result is sometimes profound embarrassment. The humorist Robert Benchley apparently said that you could make a monkey out of a person by simply employing their own quotations. Would you please help me to …
Continue reading “The Surest Way to Make a Monkey of a Man Is to Quote Him”
Robert Benchley? Marc Connelly? Corey Ford? Bennett Cerf? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A financially unstable comedian once asked his long-time bank for a large loan. He was dumbfounded when his request was granted, and he immediately withdrew all his money from the institution while giving the following explanation: How can I trust a bank that …
Continue reading “I Don’t Trust a Bank That Would Lend Money To Such a Poor Risk”
Robert Benchley? Arthur Loeb Mayer? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The popular humorist and actor Robert Benchley has been credited with the following response to a colleague who desired company during exercise: Go jogging? What, and get hit by a meteor? Benchley died in 1945; hence, this scenario appears anachronistic. Would you please help determine what …
Continue reading “I Don’t Trust Nature. Out There Things Can Fall On You, Like Meteors or Manna”
Tallulah Bankhead? Dorothy Parker? Robert Benchley? James Boswell? Richard Burke? William Hazlitt? Dear Quote investigator: The actress Tallulah Bankhead was watching an ostentatious play, and she whispered to her companion a hilarious line based on an inverted cliché: There is less in this than meets the eye. This quip has also been attributed to two …
Robert Benchley? James G. Berrien? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Some regions of garments develop a shiny appearance when fibers are repeatedly compressed. Hence, the seats of pants sometimes become shiny. A few fabrics are particularly susceptible to this problem; in the past, blue serge suits were well-known for becoming undesirably shiny. The verb ‘to shine’ …
Continue reading “I Do Most of My Work Sitting Down. That’s Where I Shine”
Robert Benchley? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The Broadway play “Abie’s Irish Rose” opened in 1922 and ran for more than five years which was a record-breaking achievement at the time. The writer and future actor Robert Benchley was the drama critic at “Life” magazine, and apparently he detested the production. Every week he crafted a …
Sinclair Lewis? Mary Heaton Vorse? Felicia Gizycka? Robert Benchley? Douglas Fairbanks Jr.? Marianne Gingher? Stevie Cameron? Andrew Hudgins? Nora Roberts? Stephen King? Oliver Stone? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: An astonishingly simple stratagem has been recommended to anyone who wishes to become a famous author, playwright, screenwriter, or composer. The secret to success and productivity is …
Continue reading “Writing Is the Art of Applying the Seat of the Pants to the Seat of the Chair”
Neil deGrasse Tyson? Robert Benchley? Kenneth Boulding? Ross F. Papprill? Groucho Marx? Jeremy Bentham? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I enjoy humor based on clever self-referential statements, and a great example is the following: There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide everybody into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. …
Robert Benchley? Lon Robinson? Joseph Charles Salak? Bruce Caldwell? H. M. Stansifer? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Some people never know when to stop talking. I wish more people knew about the following quotation. Here are two versions: Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. Drawing on my fine command of the English …
Continue reading “Drawing on My Fine Command of Language, I Said Nothing”
Robert Benchley? Mark Twain? Walter Winchell? Groucho Marx? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: One of the funniest quotations about writing is usually credited to the brilliant wit Robert Benchley: It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too …