Tracing Quotations
Speaker: William Morris? Guy de Maupassant? Alexander Hadden? Elliot Paul? Gillian Widdicombe? Adlai Stevenson? Anonymous? Landmark: Eiffel Tower? National Theatre in London? Palace of Culture in Warsaw? Empire State Building? Dear Quote Investigator: Cultural critics have lamented that some massive structures dominating city skylines are unsightly, e.g., the Eiffel Tower, the National Theatre in London, …
Continue reading “This Is the Only Place Where I Can Avoid Seeing the Damned Thing”
P. J. Faulkner? W. Buck Taylor? Bennett Cerf? Eric Partridge? Mary Morris? William Morris? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A shaggy dog story is a rambling tale consisting of largely inconsequential events that ends with an anticlimax or an unfunny punchline. Would you please explore the origin of the shaggy dog story? Quote Investigator: The earliest …
Mark Twain? William Morris? Edward Dicey? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Skeptics have questioned the economic viability of small isolated or insular communities by derisively envisioning rudimentary economies based on simple tasks, e.g., individuals would wash clothes for one another. This notion has been credited to humorist Mark Twain and socialist activist William Morris. In modern …
Continue reading “They Eked Out a Precarious Livelihood by Taking in Each Other’s Washing”