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." |
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... or Wilde's, or Shaw's, or Dorothy Parker's. “Everything I've ever said will be attributed to Dorothy Parker,” playwright George S. Kaufman once moaned. Parker herself disavowed authorship of most of the witticisms INTRODUCTION xiii.
... once wrote in a poem, when tempted to try an epigram in literate company she never sought to take credit because “We all assume that Oscar said it.” Oscar Wilde was well aware of his status as a flypaper figure to whom all manner of ...
... once observed,” etc.). In other cases quotations can be scrutinized much as an authenticator examines documents for evidence of forgery. Some are not characteristic of the person to whom they're attributed. Others are simply too neat ...
... once said, “Can't anybody play this here game?” After reporters gave the manager a hand with his grammar, “Can't anybody here play this game?” became one of Stengel's most famous lines. Cleaning up diction while preserving meaning is a ...
... once observe, “It isn't so astonishing the things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so,” but biographer Albert Bigelow Paine said he was paraphrasing a remark by humorist Josh Billings. (In ...
Contents
1 | |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 259 |
SOURCE NOTES | 267 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 345 |
KEY WORD INDEX | 347 |
NAME INDEX | 375 |
SIDEBAR INDEX | 389 |