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
Results 1-5 of 94
... thing. But what good does it do a speaker, or writer, to cite the Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who in a mid-nineteenth-century sermon, launched this observation into public discourse as “an old saying”? Since clever lines so ...
... thing” is routinely attributed to football coach Vince Lombardi. In England, it's credited to soccer coach Bill Shankly. “Golf is a good walk spoiled” is given to Mark Twain in the United States, author Kurt Tucholsky in Germany ...
... thing. Quotes without citations should be treated with the utmost suspicion. When a quotation routinely shows up in compilations with no source, there probably is none. “Nice guys finish last,” for example, spent so many decades ...
... thing a reporter can do is quote a subject correctly, including all the “uhs, ums, you knows,” digressions, run-on sentences, and examples of tortured syntax. While managing the inept New York Mets, an exasperated Casey Stengel once ...
... thing. As discussed in the text, there is a reason for this discrepancy, and Bartlett's gives the more reliable ... things wrong goes with the quote-compiling territory. Even though I've done my best to minimize them, this book ...
Contents
1 | |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 259 |
SOURCE NOTES | 267 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 345 |
KEY WORD INDEX | 347 |
NAME INDEX | 375 |
SIDEBAR INDEX | 389 |