In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of Orwell’s famous six-word slogan, ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’
The six-word sentence ‘four legs good, two legs bad’ is one of the two widely known lines from George Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm – the other being ‘all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others’.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle looks into the origins of a famous Shakespeare quotation
‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much’ is a phrase people sometimes use in jest, especially the sort of folk who are fond of talking of heading to the nearest hostelry for flagons of ale and addressing each other as ‘good sir’. The meaning of the phrase is relatively straightforward, but what about its origins?
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines the origins of a famous phrase
‘We have nothing to fear except fear itself.’ Those words – and the sentiment they convey – are inextricably bound up with Franklin D. Roosevelt. But what are the origins of the phrase ‘nothing to fear but fear itself’? Did Roosevelt originate it?
Let’s start with FDR. Certainly, at his 1933 Presidential Inauguration, Franklin D. Roosevelt did express such a sentiment:
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Previously, we offered some of our favourite funny quotations about books from writers past and present. Now, it’s the turn of cats. Many authors have owned cats, and many authors have written whole books about cats, so it’s of little surprise to learn that there are many wise, witty, funny, and true quotations about cats to be found in the world of literature.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle revels in the world of quirky quotations courtesy of Gyles Brandreth
Here at Interesting Literature we love a good quotation. Much wit and wisdom have been condensed into a single line, or perhaps two pithy lines, and so a book of quotations is always a welcome addition to the creaking bookshelves here at IL Towers. The latest book to hit the shelves comes courtesy of a review copy of Gyles Brandreth’s Messing About in Quotes: A Little Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
And there’s something suitably Toadlike about Messing about in Quotes: dashing about from one subject to another, taking in animals and birds on one page and then apologies and excuses on the next, before we move on to cats and dogs, certainty and doubt, and so on through the alphabet, right through to sections treating words, work, writers, writing, and youth. (Zebras, I’m sorry to say, don’t get their own section, but then one wonders how many great zebra-themed quips there have been down the centuries.)