The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and WhenSt. Martin's Publishing Group, 2007 M04 1 - 416 pages Our language is full of hundreds of quotations that are often cited but seldom confirmed. Ralph Keyes's The Quote Verifier considers not only classic misquotes such as "Nice guys finish last," and "Play it again, Sam," but more surprising ones such as "Ain't I a woman?" and "Golf is a good walk spoiled," as well as the origins of popular sayings such as "The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings," "No one washes a rented car," and "Make my day." |
From inside the book
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... Famous dead people make excellent commentators on current events. During George W. Bush's first term in office, a warning supposedly made by Julius Caesar raced around the Internet. This began, “Beware the leader who bangs the drums of ...
... famous lines. Cleaning up diction while preserving meaning is a service to reader and subject alike. This can be a matter of judgment, of course. When a New Orleans reporter climbed aboard a Pullman car where Vice President Jack Garner ...
... famous adage in 1885, but it gave no context. While researching John Wanamaker, King of Merchants (1993), biographer William Allen Zulker found the adage typed on a sheet of paper in Wanamaker's archives, but without a name or source ...
... famous four words are “what we need her to have said.” Verdict: Credit Frances Dana Gage for this feminist saying, not Sojourner Truth. “It AIN'T so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that ...
... famous line. “AMERICA is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Like presidents Eisenhower and Reagan before him, Bill Clinton was fond of attributing these words to Alexis de ...