The origins of a famous quip – in a half-forgotten work of literature This should be an easy question. Surely it was Oscar Wilde who first said, ‘I am not young enough to know everything’? It certainly sounds like one of Wilde’s witty quotations, and numerous quotation sites (see, for […]
A septet of great words invented by the American wit, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) H. L. Mencken (Henry Louis Mencken, to give him his full name) was born on this day in 1880, so to toast this great American journalist, critic, and all-round wit, we’ve put together a list of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]