A great book of quotations would embarrass certain of your relatives and be banned by lesser school districts. When a writer says something new and real, it can be shocking, like a surprise emission from a bodily orifice. The books of quotations that rarely let you down are commonplace books, those intellectual scrapbooks made for personal use and compiled by a single avid reader.
(via Prufrock)
An early holiday shopping message from Puritan preacher Thomas Brooks:
“Christians act below their spiritual birth and their holy calling, when they suffer their hearts to be troubled and perplexed for the want of temporal things. Could they read special love in such gifts? Would their happiness lie in the enjoyment of them? Nay then, believer, let not the want of those things trouble thee, the enjoyment of which could never make thee happy.”
The Quote Investigator relates this story. “In 1953 an Associated Press reporter described his experiences in Moscow after the death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The journalist reported the caustic comment of an unnamed Russian:
I saw Muscovites by the countless thousands shuffle through the cold March days and nights, in long lines that stretched for miles into the suburbs, to see the dead body of the grim dictator.
One Russian whispered to me: “They’ve come to make sure he’s really dead.”
But that isn’t the only account of someone suggesting he or many others had attended a funeral for this purpose. Read on for more.
Who first said, “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it”? Is it an old Chinese proverb or more recent American maxim?
The Quote Investigator works it over and decides he doesn’t know, but there’s this:
One instance appeared on March 7, 1903 in a periodical called “The Public” based in Chicago, Illinois. An acknowledgment to the humor magazine “Puck” was appended.
Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.—Puck.
Who first said, “With great power comes great responsibility“? Was it Marvel Comics writers for Spiderman? Was it Voltaire? Quote Investigator says there are better references, such as this from the French Revolution: “They must consider that great responsibility follows inseparably from great power.” A similar idea is found in Luke 12:48.
Who came up with this joke, “Only monarchs, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‘we’”? The Quote Investigator, um, investigates.
This has made my day. In one of the books I edited this summer, the author attributed this quote to Coach John Wooden, “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” I searched for verification that Coach Wooden said it or came up with it himself, but could only find it widely attributed to him without citation. I found it attributed to Art Linkletter too, also without citation.
If I said known Wooden (1910-2010) was as old as Linkletter (1912-2010), I might have let it go, but I thought Linkletter was much older and consequently in a better position to have said something like this before the coach. So I kept looking, and finding nothing, asked The Quote Investigator to help. With his workload, I didn’t expect an answer right away, but in today’s email, I received word that he had posted his report:
(Great thanks to TygerBurning and Phil Wade whose inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Wade pointed to the 1979 citation and noted that Linkletter credited Wooden.)
Your desire to explore the genuine provenance of quotations is admirable. I appreciate your visiting and asking about an interesting saying.
Best wishes,
Garson O’Toole
When I wrote to QI, I told him I had found the quote attributed to Wooden without citation in Yes, You Can by Linkletter, so that ruled out one name, but that’s as much as I could discover. Seeing the final QI report, I don’t believe I could have found the answer.
In May 1965 an instance of this aphorism using the word “folks” was published in a newspaper column in Ada, Oklahoma together with miscellaneous sayings. No attribution was provided:
Things turn out best for folks who make the best of the way things turn out.
… In the following years, close variants of the adage were published in numerous newspapers. No individual was credited with the remark, and QI believes the statement should be labeled anonymous.
So chalk this one up to folk wisdom, friends.
Perhaps you’ve heard this story about Sir Winston Churchill and Lady Nancy Astor, who apparently had a famous rivalry. Astor was the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons (1919). Her Wikipedia page notes her quick wit and, though they are poorly documented, her trading of insults with Churchill. One rumored exchange says Churchill disliked her being in parliament, saying that having a woman there was like being intruded upon in the bathroom. Astor replied, “You’re not handsome enough to have such fears.”
A familiar anecdote has the viscountess in a disdainful state of her prime minister. She says, “If I were your wife, I’d poison your coffee.” Churchill replies, “If I were your husband, I’d drink it.”
Astor’s Wikipedia scholars attribute this quote, not to Churchill, but to his marvelously funny friend, Lord Birkenhead. I can’t suggest Birkenhead did not have this exchange, but I’m fascinated to learn that the insult is much older than he, Churchill, or Astor. The Quote Investigator, my new favorite website, reports the earliest recording of this joke comes from an 1899 Oswego, New York, newspaper. It was completely anonymous, being passed off as something the reporter overheard on the subway. The account was picked up by many newspapers, so by the time Birkenhead and Astor may have conversed, it would have been an old joke.
What’s more amusing is many people have claimed credit for it or given it to others. When Groucho Marx told the joke in 1962, he told it of George B. Shaw insulting a woman in his audience. In 1900, a comic named Pinckney claimed to have invented the dialogue a short time before the interview and that it had already worn itself out by flying around the world.
So if Lady Astor actually told Churchill or Birkenhead that she would poison them if they were married, she had plenty of opportunity to know she was setting herself up for a great joke.
1. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a hastily uploaded picture of a plane at the departure gate.”
2. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I tweeted my followers to ask which I should take.”
I love these. Read more at 501 Places
“He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient.” ~W.J. Cameron