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
Results 1-5 of 88
... observation actually originated with Helmuth von Moltke in the mid-nineteenth century. The Prussian field marshal's version was not so succinct, however. What von Moltke wrote was “Therefore no plan of operations extends with any ...
... observation to his home state. When it comes to quotations, memory is too much the servant of aspirations, not enough an apostle of accuracy. That is why misremembered quotations so often improve on real ones. Memory may be a terrible ...
... observation into public discourse as “an old saying”? Since clever lines so routinely travel from obscure mouths to prominent ones, it is generally safe to assume that when two parties are thought to have said something, the lesser ...
... observation. Since Wanamaker founded his first department store in 1861, when Lever was ten, this seems unlikely. Fortune magazine thought Wanamaker expressed the famous adage in 1885, but it gave no context. While researching John ...
... observation gets attributed most often to Mark Twain, as well as to his fellow humorists Artemus Ward, Kin Hubbard ... observe, “It isn't so astonishing the things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't ...