The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and WhenOur 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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... became Newton's own, not because he deliberately made it so but because admirers of Newton made it so.” The misattribution process is not random. Patterns can be discerned. If a comment is saintly, it must have been made by Gandhi (or ...
... became one of Stengel's most 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 ...
... became a 1948 novel, one character says to another, “Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society.” Verdict: Credit Robert Heinlein. “An ARMY travels on its stomach.” This bedrock axiom of military science is generally ...
... became a favorite among executives who considered themselves tough. Where did it originate? One possibility is a Vietnam-era congressional debate in which a liberal Democrat pleaded for programs designed to “win the hearts and minds of ...
... became T-shirt-common in the English-speaking world. In 1962 the Royal Shakespeare Company mounted a play written by Henry Living called Nil Carborundum. Verdict: Popular slogan invented by some unknown wit just before or during World ...
Contents
1 | |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 259 |
SOURCE NOTES | 267 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 345 |
KEY WORD INDEX | 347 |
NAME INDEX | 375 |
SIDEBAR INDEX | 389 |