By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) gave us many memorable lines. The majority of these are one-liners and witticisms which he either used in conversation or sprinkled throughout his clever comedies – his plays which were performed to great acclaim during the first half of the 1890s. But ‘each man kills the thing he loves’ is a little different, as we discover when we delve into the origins of this particular Wildean quotation.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Wherever books are burned, men also, in the end, are burned.’ This observation – which is sometimes rendered in slightly different wording – has become famous as a kind of warning statement about the dangers of extreme forms of censorship. But what is the origin of this phrase, and who said it?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Let’s begin with a quiz question: what is the title of the poem in which the phrase ‘dark Satanic Mills’ appears? Is it a) ‘Jerusalem’ or b) Milton?
Most people would probably go for a), but although we know commonly know William Blake’s poem (or the words to the hymn ‘Jerusalem’, taken from Blake’s poem) by that title, strictly speaking those ‘dark Satanic Mills’ first appeared in a much longer work, an epic poem titled Milton: A Poem (1804-8).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Here’s a quiz question for you. Who was the first high-profile writer to use the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’? How about we narrow it down a little more, and ask: which high-profile Victorian writer first used the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon’. This is one of many famous Bible quotations. Indeed, it is one of many famous quotations from the New Testament. More specifically, it is one of many famous quotations from a single moment in the New Testament: the Sermon on the Mount.