Tag Archives: quotations

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction

Douthat Novel in Serial and Pranking Academic Journals

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Fantasy: Ross Douthat has written a fantasy novel and is releasing it as a serial via Substack. Author Frederick Gero Heimbach reports Douthat shopped his novel around but no traditional publisher would take it. You can start that novel, The Falcon’s Children, here. Heimbach also laments that sci-fi author Tim Powers no longer has a publisher.

Quotations: Here’s a great example of how asking the simple question, “Who said that?” or “Who was the first to say that?” can lead to nowhere interesting. Consider the origin of this statement: “Thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help.”

Quote Investigator also points out that AI programs can miss what doesn’t seem possible to miss, as in a line in an Edgar Allen Poe story.

Pranking Academic Journals: I remember the journal article Boghossian refers to as the one that busted them (the dog park article) and I thought I blogged about it at the time, but perhaps I didn’t. I tend to shy away from topics even loosely related to sex. In this video from Dad Saves America, Boghossian discusses his attempt to expose peer-reviewed journals that are willing to publish any nonsense that falls within accepted dogma. It’s incredible.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling

Things Napoleon Said and Award Censorship

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May I share some quotes and marginalia from my old quotation book with you today?

Cervantes said in Don Quixote, “There are no proverbial sayings which are not true.”

To say, “a man has an axe to grind,” first appeared in print in “Essays from The Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe” by Charles Miner, published in 1811 in the Wilkesbarre Gleaner, a Pennsylvania newspaper.

Another phrase, that sounds out of fashion to me, is “to mix with brains.” English portrait painter John Opie was asked what he mixed his colors with. He answered, “I mix them with my brains, sir.”

During a debate, when one of Phocian the Good’s (402-320 BC) statements stirred up applause of the audience, he asked a nearby friend, “Have I inadvertently said some evil thing?”

Napoleon (1769-1821) has these words attributed to him (without sources):

“Imagination rules the world.”
“I made all my generals out of mud.”
“There are two levers for moving men–interest and fear.”
“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
“Independence, like honor, is a rocky island without a beach.”

Greek general Aristides (530-468 BC) said, “The Athenians will not sell their liberties for all the gold either above or under ground.”

And, finally, the Stoics had this proverb, according to Plutarch: “The good man only is free; all bad men are slaves.”

Do all of those right true? They aren’t all proverbial, so we could cut them a bit of slack. What else do we have?

Volcanos: Seven years after Vesuvius erupted, a Jesuit priest climbed it to make his observations. “I thought I beheld the habitation of hell.”

Books: Simon Leys asked, “Are books essentially useless?” Well, they aren’t food.

Sci-Fi Award Censorship: The Hugo Awards are being held in China this year and some notable works were declared ineligible without explanation. Authors conjecture the Chinese government is to blame. Two members of the nomination board have resigned in response.

Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Poetry, Reading

Christmas Dawn, Reading Plans, and Forgetting Books

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Day was breaking. The dawn
Swept the last stars, bits of ashes, from the sky.
Of the vast rabble, Mary allowed
Only the Magi to enter the cleft in the rock.

He slept, all luminous, in the oak manager,
Like a moonbeam in the hollow of a tree.

from Boris Pasternak’s “The Christmas Star”

Reading in 2023: Joel Miller plans to read 12 classic novels next year and review one each month. His choice for July is one Lars had talked about here: Sigrid Undset’s The Wreath: Kristin Lavransdatter (Book 1).

Arthur Machen: Dale Nelson reviews a collection of essays and stories by Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947), called, “Mist and Mystery.”

Forgotten Books: Steve Donoghue had this quote nagging him recently: “Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.” 

Books and Meals: “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” Many attribute this to Ralph Waldo Emerson but the best source a version of this statement could also be attributed to another man also named Emerson.

Blogs, Socials

With Great Art and Great Quotations Comes Coolness

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D. Lee Grooms shares a fun moment when my tweet promoting on old post adds to art. Spidey probably reads this blog. All the cool kids do.

If you’re asking who said, “With great power comes great responsibility?” ask no more.

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Cursed with Interest

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From our desk of You Don’t Say, there’s a common belief that an old Chinese curse states, “May you live in interesting times.” But the best source researchers have found for this adage is a second-hand anecdote from a British ambassador.

The Quote Investigator says the saying has close ties to the family of Sir Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937), who shared the saying at a meeting of Birmingham Unionist Association in 1936. It’s a statement he may have heard his father, Joseph Chamberlain, say on occasion, not as a Chinese curse, but as his own observation.

In 1898, Joseph was reported as saying this before an audience: “I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. (Hear, hear.) I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety. (Hear, hear.)”

It’s not spelled out in the research, but you could easily imagine how a statement like this could be slightly misremembered, if not simply misunderstood in context we do not have.

[See yesterday’s post on the supposed Chinese word for crisis]

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The Chinese Word for Crisis

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From our You Have Heard It Said But I Tell You desk, the Chinese word for crisis, wēijī 危机, is not a pictogram of danger plus opportunity. You can see this definition in action in this 2009 book, Crossing the Soul’s River, in which the author says he was given this explanation first-hand.

In fact, very few Chinese letters represent little pictures of their ideas. More importantly, jī alone is not opportunity; it’s only part of several words.

A whole industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate statement. A casual search of the Web turns up more than a million references to this spurious proverb. It appears, often complete with Chinese characters, on the covers of books, on advertisements for seminars, on expensive courses for “thinking outside of the box,” and practically everywhere one turns in the world of quick-buck business, pop psychology, and orientalist hocus-pocus. This catchy expression (Crisis = Danger + Opportunity) has rapidly become nearly as ubiquitous as The Tao of Pooh and Sun Zi’s Art of War for the Board / Bed / Bath / Whichever Room.

…

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to offer another example from English that is closer to our Chinese word wēijī (“crisis”). Let’s take the –ity component of “opportunity,” “calamity” (“calamity” has a complicated etymology; see the Oxford English Dictionary, Barnhart, etc.), “felicity,” “cordiality,” “hostility,” and so forth. This –ity is a suffix that is used to form abstract nouns expressing state, quality, or condition. The words that it helps to form have a vast range of meanings, some of which are completely contradictory. Similarly the –jī of wēijī by itself does not mean the same thing as wēijī (“crisis”), jīhuì (“opportunity”), and so forth. The signification of jī changes according to the environment in which it occurs.

“Danger + Opportunity ≠ Crisis“, Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania
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Happy at Home, staying at Home

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Here’s a little Latin you may find useful when you’re working from home, recovering at home, taking refuge at home, or being confined at home.

Domi manere convenit felicibus. — It befits those who are happy at home to remain there.

I hope that’s true for you; it’s not true for too many, because as Ovid says, “Dos est uxoria lites,” that is, strife is a wife’s dowry. May that not be your home, for domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium (every man’s home is his safest place of refuge).

Remember that a friendly house is the best of houses (domus amica domus optima), but remember also that pain compels all things (dolor omnia cogit).

You may find it useful to say to yourself and others:

  • Dominus vobiscum (The Lord be with you)
  • Dominus providebit (The Lord will provide)
  • Dominus illuminatio mea (The Lord is my light)
  • Deus det [nobis pacem] (May God give [us peace])
  • Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori (God be merciful to me a sinner)

Here are a few others words you may wish to repeat, echoing the wisdom of the ages.

  • Honesty is the poor man’s pork and the rich man’s pudding.
  • Hope is grief’s best music, but help which is long on the road is no help.
  • Keep a thing seven years, and you’ll find a use for it.
  • Little fires burn up much corn.
  • Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.
  • Many a man asks the way he knows full well.

Found in W. Gurney Benham’s A Book of Quotations: Proverbs and Household Words (Photo by Drew Coffman on Unsplash)

Authors

Sir Novelty Fashion Turned Poet Laureate

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Colley Cibber (1671-1757) was an actor, playwright, and theater manager who made a name for himself initially as a comic actor in his own play, Love’s Last Shift, playing Sir Novelty Fashion.

Hilliaria: Oh! For Heav’n’s sake! no more of this Galantry, Sir Novelty: for I know you say the fame of every Woman you see.

Novelty: Every one that sees you, Madam, must say the fame. Your Beauty, like the Rack, forces every Beholder to confess his Crime–of daring to adore you.

He also reworked Shakespeare’s Richard III and Moliere’s Tartuffe. It was for crimes such as these that he was made Britain’s poet Laureate in 1730, drawing ire from contemporary poet Alexander Pope and his friends. They mocked him aggressively in print, some perhaps in good fun, some perhaps with malice.

Benham’s Book of Quotations gives sixteen pages to Pope’s words and to Cibber’s one column, and lest they die their appointed death too soon, I’ll repeat some Cibber lines here.

“Poverty, the reward of honest fools.”

“The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome
Outlives in fame the pious fool that raised it.”

“Ambition is the only power that combats love.”

“Dumb’s a sly dog.”

Continue reading Sir Novelty Fashion Turned Poet Laureate →
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How Many Filaments Did Edison Test for His Lightbulb?

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People know America’s great inventor Thomas Edison went through multitudes of material to find a good filament for his little light bulb hobby. He tested everything he could get his hands on and thought could work. Some even claim he made a large bulb in order to test the illumination of a charged cat.*

The Edison Museum states his team tested over 6,000 plant materials, many of them carbonized. The Franklin Institute makes the same claim, possibly taking it from the same source though that source isn’t clearly cited.

Rutgers’ Edison Papers says no one, not even the inventor himself, kept count of how many times they tried this or that. They quote an 1890 interview in which Edison says they tried 3,000 different theories in working out a functional and affordable light bulb, and many more experiments were conducted after they had a patent and a production factory. Edison was awarded that patent on January 27, 1880.

The number of filament experiment may be lost to history, as well as whether he actually said one of his famous quotations:

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

– Thomas Edison or Harper’s Monthly?

Ralph Keyes, in his book The Quote Verifier, notes this quote and its variations can be attributed to Edison, but the earliest version of this can be found in an 1898 Ladies Home Journal. (Check to see if you still have this edition on your TBR pile.) The magazine claims Edison offered two percent inspiration and ninety-eight percent perspiration as a formula for genius. In the years that followed, it seemed magazine writers, not the inventor, were repeating this line in different ways, but by 1932 Edison claimed it as his own.

Update: The 1932 Harper’s Monthly interview referred to above may have been a contemporary interview, an obituary, or a tribute, because the inventor died in 1931. Harper’s doesn’t make it’s archives available online for free, but I have found a citation of it saying it was the September issue of Harper’s and that Edison was thought to have said this in 1903.

Photo by Rahul from Pexels

* no one claims this.

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Yes, But Spurgeon Didn’t Say That

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“The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.”

Many places attribute this quotation to C. H. Spurgeon, and the great preacher did say something like it, but not this exactly. The Spurgeon Center has this and five other quotations in a post on things Spurgeon did not say. What he said was that we might imagine a caged lion and soldiers who have gathered to defend him. Why are they fighting for this powerful cat when the best approach is to let him out of his cage? “And the best ‘apology’ for the gospel is to let the gospel out.”

Also, “A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes.” That’s something Spurgeon said in an 1855 sermon, describing it as an old proverb. Other men, including Jonathan Swift, said it first, and it could have been a common saying when Spurgeon got around to it.

Did he say, “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages”? Did he say, “I take my text and make a beeline to the cross”? Take a look.