Archive for Quotations
Did Casa Blanca die in vain?
I just saw an email advertising a “three-day flash sale,” but I misread it as a “three-day fish sale.” Which led me, of course, to Ben Franklin’s saying about fish and guests; that turns out to derive from John Lyly’s 1578 book Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, which includes the line “fish and guests in […]
I recently had occasion to quote the line “It is not a book to be lightly thrown aside. It should be thrown with great force,” a variant of which I had always seen attributed to Dorothy Parker. But it’s my sad duty today to inform you that Parker may not have originated this joke. A […]
On WHYY’s “Radio Times” this week, in discussing Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, host Marty Moss-Coane asked her guest, “So what kind of ’splainin to do does Mark Zuckerberg have?” I’m just charmed by the construction of her sentence. It refers, of course, to one of the great Lines That […]
On the origins of the “if you love something, set it free” quotation. (Published in 2012.)
(This post is more or less NSFW.) Back in column III (which includes some NSFW material), I wrote about a game in which you replace words from Star Wars quotations with the word pants. Years later, I came across a list of the Top 278 Star Wars Lines Improved By Replacing A Word With “Pants”. […]
Mary Anne was talking about eating cake the night before surgery. I noted that cake is the best medicine. Which led me to think there could be a whole series...
The other day, Kam and I watched the Lost (season 2) episode titled “The 23rd Psalm.” And she joked, “The 23rd Psalm—isn't that ‘I must not fear; fear is the...
Back in 2002, I posted an entry in my main blog about the Longfellow line “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small” and its antecedents,...
I've been meaning for a while to collect in one place all the quotes from my sardonic pal Jack Mantis. Recently discovered the "pages" publishing system in Movable Type—sort of...