Quotes – Page 2 – Interesting Literature

The Best Sourced Dorothy Parker Quotes

10 of the best quotes from Dorothy Parker and where they first appeared

We’ve compiled a list of ten of the wittiest and wisest quotations from the Dorothy Parker oeuvre, as well as some of her pithiest and most memorable one-liners. Many quotations have been attributed to Parker, but here we’ve confined ourselves to the things that she definitely did say.

There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words. – Interview in Paris Review, 1956

I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more. – ‘The Little Hours’, 1939

Interesting Facts about William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’

The history of the classic hymn ‘Jerusalem’ and its literary origins

‘Jerusalem’ is one of the most famous hymns around, a sort of alternative national anthem for England (and some, especially those of a republican persuasion, prefer it to ‘God Save the Queen’). But as with most things which we know well, the hymn called ‘Jerusalem’ is surrounded by misconceptions, legend, and half-truths. We intend, in this post, to clear away some of the mystery in which Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ is abundantly swathed.

15 Great Sourced Mark Twain Quotes

The best funny, witty, and wise Mark Twain quotes

Mark Twain often gets the credit for all sorts of witty lines, but it turns out that he didn’t say many of them. So we set ourselves the task of tracking down the lines that Mark Twain actually did say – and this post is the result. We hope you enjoy reading these 15 of the very best Mark Twain quotes as much as we enjoyed compiling them.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. – Letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888

I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever. – ‘Answers to Correspondents’, The Californian, 17 June 1865

I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough. – Speech, 23 September 1907

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. – More Maxims of Mark, 1927

45 Great Sourced Quotes about Books

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Here is a list of our favourite quotes about books from various writers, some famous, some not so famous. We’ve only included those quotations for which we’ve managed to track down a source, whether in print or online, so you know these are authentic quotes about books, rather than of the amusing-but-apocryphal kind.

Who Said, ‘Everyone has a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay’?

Who first said this famous quip about everyone having a book or novel in them?

‘Everyone has a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.’ Or, as some sources have it, ‘Everyone has a novel in them.’ Still others: ‘Every journalist has a novel in him.’ Most of us have heard the line, or some variation on it, and understand what it’s saying: it’s challenging the age-old belief that everyone has a story to tell, by suggesting that a) not all stories are actually worth telling, and b) not everyone can tell their story very well. So much for the main thrust of the quotation; but its authorship is not such an easy thing to determine. Who actually came up with it?