Four weeks ago I invited readers to submit quotations for which they wanted me to try to trace the origins, using The Yale Book of Quotations and more recent research by me. Dozens responded via comments or e-mails. I am responding as best I can, a couple per week.
Bill asks:
I think that this is from Ambrose Bierce, but I haven’t been able to track it down. “Definition — cigarette: a small roll of paper, filled with tobacco and drugs, having a small flame at one end, and a large fool at the other.”
I’m not sure about the Bierce quote, but The Yale Book of Quotations has the following under Jonathan Swift:
[Of angling:] A stick and a string, with a fly at one end and a fool at the other.
It was quoted in The Indicator, Oct. 27, 1819. A similar remark has also been attributed to Samuel Johnson.
Authors Uncovered
Here are more quote authors Shapiro’s tracked down recently.
H.F.Hunter asks whether the following quote is by Daniel Boone:
“I can’t say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.” … I’ve always felt a special kinship to Daniel. I’ll be real disappointed if I learn that someone else said that.
No need to be disappointed! The Yale Book of Quotations has this under Boone:
[Remark, June 1819:] I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
It was quoted in Chester Harding, My Egotistigraphy (1866).
Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?
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Luck is the residue of desire.
Branch Rickey is often quoted as saying “Luck is the residue of design”, but the version above is the one I have always remembered. Which one is correct, or was Rickey paraphrasing someone else?
” a plant where everyone is working all the time is inefficient ”
“the difference between the possible and the impossible is a measure of a man’s will.”
Somewhat the truth- but who said it?
Summer, I think you’re referring to the scene in Pulp Fiction where Bruce Willis’ wife is wishing she had a belly.
If there’s any chance you could find the origin of the phrase “The more things change the more they stay the same” I’d be very pleased. Thanks.
After saying “water finds its own mark” to someone the other day, the person told me that Anton LaVey, the renowned Satanist, had coined the phrase in the 1960′s.
But my aunts and uncles seem sure that my grandfather used the term well before the 1960′s.
So where did it originate?
how about the source of the quote “dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century” ?
This is not a “who said it” but rather a “what did whoever said it say.” Some years ago I read something somewhere that referred to people who publicly preach prudish morality and then get exposed for sexual transgressions as blank blanks. I remember that the coinage was very similar to “chicken hawks,” used for pro-war politicians who kept themselves out of war when they were of military age. I did not jot it down because I was sure that I would remember it. But now all I can remember is that I for got it and it has been driving me nuts. Please help preach high morality and then get exposed for sexual