Questions tagged [quote-source]
Questions seeking to identify the source of a quote. If possible, include the exact quote whose origin you're seeking, or describe it as closely as you can. (For questions seeking to identify a entire story or work of literature from some remembered details, use the [identification-request] tag instead.)
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Who said that Allingham "polished her prose until it shone over-bright," and where?
Somebody read to me from a book about Allingham long ago that she would "polish her prose until it shone over-bright" and then dictate it to her husband to reduce it to a more readable vernacular. I ...
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Source of the quote "The only bad question is an unasked one"?
There are many variations on this phrase, but is there an original source which inspired the others, or is it just a piece of popular wisdom that's emerged naturally from humanity?
Wikipedia has a ...
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Where is this quote about Man, Hero, Legend and Myth from?
This quote is scattered throughout the Web:
Through action, a Man becomes a Hero
Through death, a Hero becomes a Legend
Through time, a Legend becomes a Myth
And by learning from the Myth, a Man ...
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Source of an Asimov quotation about the citadel of truth
Somewhere Isaac Asimov remarks that the citadel of truth can only be breached by a brute-force assault. I would like the exact source of this quote.
user5699
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Tracking down a literary quote about grammar
I once read a quote that goes something like,
We should all be grateful to grammarians for saving us in fifty years
from a grievous error.
I think it's by Proust, but Google doesn't seem to ...
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Did Sarojini Naidu say this: When the house is on fire, the poet should stop singing...?
Did Sarojini Naidu say something about this:
"When the house is on fire, the poet should stop singing, and get the
buckets to put out the fire."
I got this from a FB post. But I want to find out ...
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Is there a common origin to the phrase "the revolution will not be televised / mentioned in the newspaper"
I'm listening in an offhand way to G.K. Chesterton's Tales from the Long Bow audiobook and I heard the phrase:
when the real revolution happens it won't be mentioned in the newspapers
It sounded ...
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Source of alleged San Ignacio of Lyola quote: ‘In a besieged city, all dissent is treason.’
I'm trying to find the source of the quote in the title.
This Guardian article from 2021 quotes ‘Hal Klepak, professor emeritus of history and strategy at the Royal Military College of Canada’ as ...
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Did Jorge Borges write that it takes two to write a novel?
Did Jorge Borges say that all great literature is filled with ambiguities and obscurities? That it takes two people to write a novel, one the writer and the other the reader. If so, could you source ...
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Where did Derrida say that he deliberately made his works difficult?
In a comment below the question How does Derrida's Signifying obfuscate his writing?, DJohnson wrote,
Just for the record Derrida has been quoted as stating that he deliberately made his ...
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Where is this passage by Nabokov on the power of language located?
I’m losing my mind, because I’ve lost a quotation that I had a few weeks ago and now can’t relocate it for the life of me. It was from either Brian Boyd’s two-volume biography of Nabokov or Boyd's ...
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Finding author and source of quote about holocaust
I cannot remember where I read a quote about holocaust (partial quote further down) and although I'm almost certain that it was from some jewish author who himself survived holocaust I cannot remember ...
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Quote about being better not to give something than to take away
I'm looking for source of a quote about being better not to give something than to take away. It's been many years, so I can't recall much more about the quote. I thought it would be from the book ...
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In what context did Joyce Rachelle say this quote?
I often see this quote from Joyce Rachelle being posted: “Don't be afraid to make mistakes. But if you do, make new ones. Life is too short to make the wrong choice twice.”
I was wondering if anyone ...
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Where did Derrida say that Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction is a good introduction to his work?
The works of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004) had a significant impact on literary theory, leading to the development of a method of analysis known as deconstruction. (Derrida said ...
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Source of the quote "Life is a balance between holding on and letting go" from Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī
There is a quote in the Internet which says: "Life is a balance between holding on and letting go". People cited it to Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (Rumi). My question is that:
What is the ...
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Which part or quote in Cicero is Greene referring to?
In Robert Greene's novel Gwydonius; The Carde of Fancie, one of the characters, Castania, uses the following words in her rejection of Gwydonius (italics from the origin; bold by me):
Better it is ...
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Did Stefan Zweig tell this anecdote in The World of Yesterday"?
Many years ago I read The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig. I believe that in this book there was the following, real-life story: Shortly before the outbreak of World War II several intellectuals, ...
user658
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Strange purported David Foster Wallace quote
You say you would only love a woman who is a reader and at least as intelligent as you. This is a challenge. Not on account of women, but the condition of Americans generally. If you were a homosexual ...
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Looking for a quote about the importance of writing about women's stories, no matter how 'small' they are
I had a read a quote a long time ago by a famous author who was talking about how she was asked why she thought she should write about something as 'insignificant' as women talking in rooms when she ...
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Looking for the source of a quotation about how to draw beautifully
I vaguely remember a quotation that I might have read in a book many years ago, but can't remember exactly, what or where that was. Various search engines have been of little help, so far. It goes ...
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'Nature Nodding' - author and date?
Haldane MacFall's novel The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer (1898) has a lead-in quotation that puzzles me. No author is indicated; the quotation is ascribed to a work, 'Nature Nods', but no amount of ...
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Source of Greg LeMond's quote, "It never gets easier; you just go faster."
I'm writing an article about cycling and I want to include a well know quote from the professional cyclist Greg LeMond (the first and only American to win the Tour de France). The quote is:
It never ...
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Where was Jeff Nuttall's "Bomb Culture" discussed in Parliament?
A fact frequently mentioned about Jeff Nuttall's book Bomb Culture (1968) is that it was the subject of a discussion in Parliament, e.g. in an article announcing a Nuttall exhibition at a library
or ...
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MLK Jr. quote about speaking out against anti-Semitism even if Jewish leaders say they don't need the help
I remember some years ago listening to a recording of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr, in which he says something like:
Even if Jewish leaders told me "No, we do not need your help fighting ...
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Looking for famous scientist who originated the quote: "keep ten problems in your mind.."
I have a vague recollection of a scientist sharing a problem solving strategy. The content of that quote or strategy, which I do not recollect literally, can be summarized as:
Keep a list of 10 ...
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Searching for a Whitman quote
I am looking for a quote attributed to Walt Whitman with the following approximate meaning:
Finding faults with others requires a bit of ability,
but stopping yourself from abusing that information ...
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A quote supposedly from Gustave Flaubert
So, do some of you happen to know, did Gustave Flaubert really say Pulchritudo vitae in vico, ea videtur solummodo a poetis, ea non videtur a hominibus in vicis. or anything like that? If so, where?
...
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Source of "Immortalised in Prose, A God Among the Pages"
I'm pretty sure this comes from an English poem, referring a woman's beauty. The author suggests that roses fade and wither, and that by describing her in written word keeps her alive forever.
That ...
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Bakhtin quote about flat plots and characters
Through serendipity (this question led me to Wikipedia article about Ian Watt) I found that that the Russian literary theorist Mikhael Bakhtin is supposed to have written that certain genres with flat ...
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Quote: "No more effective device has yet been invented to prevent one man from helping another as writing a book"
I thought I once heard something like the following quote:
No more effective device has yet been invented to prevent one man from helping another as writing a book.
or maybe
There is no more ...
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Trying to find a quote: Salt on top of the mountain, instead of snow
Google has failed me. I am trying to recall a quote I read once, which goes something like this: "I have reached the mountain peak I saw in my youth, but it is not snow here; it is only salt." Meaning,...
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Nicanor Parra line: "Nothing important is learned from books. (I read this in a book.)"
This is one of Parra's "anti-poems" but I can't recall the exact wording, or which book it appeared in, and can't seem to find it online. The poem says something along the lines of
Nothing ...
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Source and phrasing of quote on knowledge and toil
I vaguely remember a quote one of my professors used (a long time ago) in one of his lectures about the difficulty of acquiring knowledge. It went along the lines of: "Toil is the currency used ...
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Who does this Urdu proverb originate from?
First let me try my best to transliterate the Urdu version of the quote in question:
Insaan ho, to kisi ke kaam ao; warna khao, pio aur chale jao.
A rough translation would be something like:
If ...
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0
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Did Gertrude Stein see her work as an excess of consciousness?
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American modernist author. From 1893 to 1897 she was a student of psychologist William James. She experimented with stream of consciousness and results from such ...
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Where and when did Marcel Reich-Ranicki quip about a book being too long?
Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920–2013) was probably the most famous—or infamous—German literary critic of the second half of the twentieth century. From 1988 to 2001, Reich-Ranicki hosted the literary talk ...
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Notebook epigram referring to 'only death in the universe'
Camus says somewhere that there is only death in the universe. By 'death' he simply means physics (energy, matter). He is rejecting the metaphysics of a universal dualism: Life and Death. I believe ...
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Origin of the quote "Sadness is caused by intelligence"?
In social media (1)(2)(3), I have found:
"Sadness is caused by intelligence, the more you understand certain things, the more you wish you didn't understand them."
— Charles Bukowski.
But yet ...
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Quote like "Learn the call of birds and you will never be alone" source?
I read this quote a few years ago and cannot remember the source. I could be misremembering it or combining two quotes together? I just took up birding and this quote is so true: there are not many ...
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Quote about using accurate words (e.g. not to exaggerate beauty) to not wear down their meaning
Many years ago, I seem to recall, I read a quote that discouraged the use of superlative words for mundane events, arguing that then, when we found something truly superlative before us, we'd find ...
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What famous writer said, "to accurately (or precisely) say how things are is to be truly revolutionary?"
The extended version is something like this: "to accurately say how things are (or how the world is) is to be truly revolutionary, to say how things (or how the world) should be merely reactionary." ...
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Who is the author of this quote about saying the right words on a mountaintop and changing the world?
I have a recollection of a quote I thought came from Heinrich Heine. My recollection of the quote is something like this:
If you go up to the mountaintop and say the right words, the whole world ...
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Where can this long sentence ending with "won't find it here" be found in "Death in the Afternoon"?
I heard that Death in the Afternoon contains a long sentence beginning something like "Those looking for the Spain" followed by a succession of branching clauses drawing focus to Spain's ...
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