The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and WhenSt. Martin's Publishing Group, 1. apr 2007 - 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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... recording, or other source. Based on such evidence, it is often possible to make a probable case about who said what, where, and when. In other cases one can nail down some evidence of provenance, but only some. The original wording or ...
... recorded use as slang is more recent: in a 1967 book about pilots in Vietnam. “Earliest use” is a tentative term, of course. One can only report the best information available at the time one is writing. It also is important to focus on ...
... recorded in his notebook at the end of World War II: “As soon as any man says of the affairs of the state, What does it matter to me? the state may be given up as lost.” That is a stretch. More likely the thought was a rhetorical ...
... recorded in medieval England was “Who climbeth highest most dreadful is his fall.” In the fourth century a.d. the ... recordings of the senator's observations—all to no avail. Dirksen is on record as having said, “A billion for this, a ...
... recorded in the Chicago Tribune in 1926: “No one in this world, so far as I know,—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the ...
Contents
1 | |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 259 |
SOURCE NOTES | 267 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 345 |
KEY WORD INDEX | 347 |
NAME INDEX | 375 |
SIDEBAR INDEX | 389 |