That Was Really Tacky Say It Again
'Hemingway Didn't Say That' (And Neither Did Twain Or Kafka)
Author Garson O'Toole has a simple explanation for why quotes are often wrongly attributed to Marking Twain: "If you preface a quotation past saying it's from Twain, then people are prepared to laugh at information technology." Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images hide caption
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Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images
Author Garson O'Toole has a simple explanation for why quotes are often wrongly attributed to Mark Twain: "If you lot preface a quotation by saying it's from Twain, then people are prepared to laugh at it."
Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images
Earlier this year, the Republican National Committee marked Abraham Lincoln's altogether by sharing a charming, if banal, adage attributed to Lincoln: "In the finish, it's not the years in your life that count. It'southward the life in your years."
The trouble is there'south no evidence Lincoln e'er wrote or said information technology, which critics on Twitter were only besides delighted to signal out. The RNC took down the tweet, simply all that trouble could have been avoided if they'd showtime checked in with Garson O'Toole. That's the pen name of a man who has tracked down the true origins of hundreds of quotes on his website, Quote Investigator.
O'Toole has collected some of those investigations into a new book called Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations. He says, "Information technology'south a lot of fun to uncover these hidden histories, and I'1000 also very glad when I become to give credit to the person who actually said information technology."
Interview Highlights
On why quotes oftentimes become wrongly attributed to Mark Twain
Marker Twain is known for having a fantastic sense of humour, and if you preface a quotation by maxim it's from Twain, then people are prepared to express mirth at it, to think that it's wonderful. Many quotations, they're anonymous or from lesser-known comedians reassigned to Twain. There might exist a joke and somebody would say it'southward Twain-similar and so the next person will say, "No, actually, it's from Twain."
Hemingway Didn't Say That
The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations
Hardcover, 383 pages |
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On the origin of the quote "Better to remain silent and exist thought a fool than to speak and to remove all dubiety," which has been wrongly attributed to both to Abraham Lincoln and Marking Twain
The earliest evidence that I was able to detect was a 1907 book past Maurice Switzer. And information technology seems to incorporate a lot of original material and it includes the argument "Information technology is better to remain silent at the risk of being idea a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of information technology." So it's slightly different phrasing, but I believe that is what evolved to generate the modern mutual version.
On the quote past author Anne Rice that fifty-fifty she mistakenly attributed to Franz Kafka
"Don't bend; don't water information technology down; don't attempt to go far logical; don't edit your ain soul according to the fashion." ... It was in an introduction to a collection of stories by Franz Kafka, and she was talking about how she'd been inspired by him. It was her perception of the mode Kafka idea when he was writing his stories, simply somebody reading that introduction thought that it must have been Kafka that said this instead of Anne Rice and so information technology started being distributed in that way.
I got an electronic mail from an individual who said that on Facebook Anne Rice had posted this quotation and she had attributed it to Kafka. So that was enormously confusing to me because I thought that if anyone would exist able to recognize that quotation, it would be the person who created information technology. Then I sent a Facebook bulletin to Anne Rice; she replied very rapidly and said she would await into it to try to find out who really created information technology. And so she came dorsum with another answer saying that she'd discovered that in fact it was her words and that she had written it in this introduction, and equally show of that she gave me a URL that pointed to my website. ... And it's understandable: She's written a large number of words and she'd written this more than a decade in the past.
On why he feels this work is important
Many of these quotations are cultural landmarks. They affect the manner nosotros call back about, say, environmentalism. Let me find this quote: "We practise not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." That's been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson; it's considered a Native American maxim; an Amish maxim. But the primeval evidence I found: There'southward an activist named Wendell Berry and he was discussing practiced stewardship of the environment ... and I recall he deserves credit for this kind of a cultural landmark.
Editor Melissa Gray and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522581148/hemingway-didnt-say-that-and-neither-did-twain-or-kafka
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