36
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Accepted
Origins of quote: "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
This looks like a spoof of the quote from The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien:
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
It comes from The Fellowship of ...
- 23.3k
31
votes
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Story where professor claims a step in a proof "is obvious" when it is far from obvious
This is a well-known piece of mathematical folklore that has been “told about most teachers of any great reputation” (Norman Beers, quoted below) and so we cannot take seriously any particular ...
- 53.5k
27
votes
What is the source of "You can achieve a lot with hate, but even more with love" (Shakespeare?)
This is from Émile Montégut’s translation of Romeo and Juliet:
Roméo. — Hélas! pourquoi faut-il que l’amour, dont la vue est toujours couverte d’un bandeau, puisse sans yeux trouver le chemin qui ...
- 53.5k
25
votes
Does Don Quijote in fact say "Facts are the enemy of truth"?
As the OP noted, this quote does not appear in Don Quijote de la Mancha by Cervantes. It does, however, appear in a different version of Quijote: the musical based on Cervantes' work, with libretto by ...
- 8,861
23
votes
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Where does this Federico Garcia Lorca quote come from? Is it a fake?
This is a quote from an interview he gave in 1931.
Traigo preparados cuatro libros. De teatro. De poesía. Y de impresiones neoyorkinas, el que puede titularse : la ciudad, interpretación personal, ...
22
votes
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No mayonnaise in Ireland?
The phrase comes from a story by humorist Will Stanton that appeared in the May 1971 issue of Reader's Digest. The narrator claims that he is subject to "a kind of slip-of-the-ear," leading ...
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20
votes
Origin of “Good books are the warehouses of ideas”, attributed to H. G. Wells on commemorative £2 coin?
TL;DR: It’s a typographical error: for “ideas” read “ideals”!
“Ideals!” said my uncle; “certainly Ideals. Of course one must have ideals, else life would be bare materialism. Bare fact alone, naked ...
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20
votes
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Source of quote about businessmen conspiring when they meet
This is from The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, ...
- 53.5k
17
votes
What is the background of the epigram "I'm not a nitpicker nor a nitpicker's son, but I'll pick your nits 'til the nitpicker comes"?
This seems to be a bowdlerization of a well-known tongue-twister:
Repeat 3 times: “I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m a pheasant plucker’s son, and I’m only plucking pheasants till the pheasant plucker ...
- 53.5k
17
votes
Accepted
"There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings" — where does this Dostoyevsky quote come from?
I believe that this derives, via a game of whispers, from a line in The Idiot, where Ippolit Terentyev says:
— Нет, а за то, что недостоин своего страдания.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1869). The Idiot, part ...
- 53.5k
16
votes
"There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea." Did Aristotle really say this?
I found a French version of the quote on histoire-genealogie.com, where it was attributed to Plato:
« Il y a trois sortes d’hommes : les vivants, les morts, et ceux qui vont en mer » (Platon : ...
- 44k
15
votes
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Source of quote: "Speaking the truth that somebody wants you not to publish is journalism. Everything else is marketing."
This quote has a long history and its true origins are obscure.
I began my investigation of this question by doing a web search for quote speaking truth wants publish journalism marketing. In the ...
- 71k
15
votes
Accepted
What is the source of "You can achieve a lot with hate, but even more with love" (Shakespeare?)
Since you say the quote isn't exact, the best I can remember is the following from Romeo and Juliet (emphasis mine):
Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see ...
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15
votes
Accepted
Is the opening quote in Michael Crichton’s “Airframe” real or fictional?
It’s a fabrication. Rather than trying to verify the existence (or not) of John Lawton, the simpler route is to try to verify the existence (or not) of The American Association of Broadcast ...
- 3,005
14
votes
Who first said this quote about how we only sleep safely because "rough men stand ready" to fight on our behalf?
Actually? Neither.
In conclusion, QI believes that this saying was introduced by
Richard Grenier who was attempting to provide a pithy representation
of an idea he ascribed to George Orwell. ...
- 5,930
14
votes
Story where professor claims a step in a proof "is obvious" when it is far from obvious
Richard P. Feynman tells a similar story (from personal experience at Princeton graduate school) in his book Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman (in the section headed ‘A Different Box Of Tools’):
I ...
- 441
14
votes
Accepted
“Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.” Is this a genuine TS Eliot quote?
It is not a word-for-word match, but in his 1949 work The Cocktail Party, Eliot wrote:
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want
to feel important.
The full text is ...
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14
votes
Did George Bernard Shaw write the poem "Living Grave"?
The earliest appearance of this poem that I was able to locate is in Religion & Peace (1957) by S. C. Diwaker:
In this regard the words of George Bernard Shaw are ever memorable:
We are the ...
- 53.5k
13
votes
Accepted
Did Stevenson really claim to have been inspired by brownies?
Yep.
Stevenson writes in his A Chapter on Dreams, which you can see a book scan at that link, and a text version at Project Gutenburg:
Well, as regards the dreamer, I can answer that, for he is no ...
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13
votes
Story where professor claims a step in a proof "is obvious" when it is far from obvious
Gareth Rees has done a excellent job of finding similar jokes, as well as the first time they were written down. However, he doesn't really tell you the reason the joke is funny.
In mathematical ...
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12
votes
"It might be for years, and it might be for ever," - What is the original novel this quote appeared in?
Searching for your quoted phrase online brings up a number of results all of which place the words inside inverted commas, suggesting they are all quoting something, as you surmised.
Among the results ...
- 18.6k
12
votes
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From which book or essay are these words by Ralph Waldo Emerson? "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year..."
This passage is assembled (in the common fashion of inspirational texts) from bits and pieces, mostly but not entirely by Emerson. Let’s take it sentence by sentence.
One of the illusions is that the ...
- 53.5k
12
votes
Aslan as an alternative version of Jesus as the form in which he may have appeared in an alternative reality?
Already answered over here: In-universe, is Aslan actually Jesus? (my highest-voted question on the SE network). There's two explicit quotes from Lewis's letters, and one very heavy implication in the ...
- 71k
12
votes
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Identify Source of Quote on Running Out of Breath and Commas
Looks like you're thinking of Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge (1865), which is available on Wikisource:
"And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well ...
- 23.3k
12
votes
What is the source for C.S. Lewis' quote "A good book should be entertaining"?
This is a slightly mangled version of a phrase from Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism (1961). Here’s the whole paragraph:
In characterising the two sorts of reading I have deliberately avoided the ...
- 53.5k
11
votes
Accepted
What is the source of the quote "Robust grass endures mighty winds..."?
I have read all of Shakespeare's works and the quote does not even sound like a Shakespeare quote. Most of Shakespeare's works are written in a type of verse known as iambic pentameter and the quote ...
- 44k
11
votes
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Does this quote belong to Goethe?
TL;DR: The quote comes from a 1917 work by William James. James says Goethe wrote it in 1824, but in fact it was first published in 1836 (in German) by Johann Eckermann, as part of Eckermann's ...
11
votes
What was the exact wording from Ivanhoe of this advice on how to free yourself from slavery?
Scott made his Saxons drink ‘ale’, not ‘beer’. In doing so he was following the Saxons’ own usage: the word ‘beer’ was “rare, except in poetry, and it seems to have become common only in the 16th ...
- 53.5k
11
votes
Accepted
Original Russian text of this review of Crime and Punishment
I googled for "мудрость сердца" (the wisdom of the heart) and "достоевский" and found a book "Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. His life and works" (comp. V. Pokrovsky), and ...
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