Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

~Who proclaimed that photography is to painting as water is to wine?

~Who protested, “They have taken away all our liberties—now they have given us jury trials!”?

Stephen Oresman seeks a source and precise wording for military advice allegedly given by the Duke of Wellington to a young subaltern: “Eat, sleep, and defecate at every available opportunity.”

“mediocre” (March-April). Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations (see “Harvard in Epigram,” January-February, page 84), offers two variants: “Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs” (Max Beerbohm, in the Saturday Review [November 5, 1904]) and “Only a mediocre writer is always at his best” (in W. Somerset Maugham’s introduction to The Portable Dorothy Parker [1944]).

 

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

 

You might also like

The Picture of Freedom

A Boston Athenaeum exhibit explores an abolitionist with Harvard ties.

Jeff Lichtman Appointed Dean of Science

Neuroscientist to lead Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences division

New Kennedy School Dean Announced

Stanford political scientist Jeremy Weinstein set to lead

Most popular

Jeff Lichtman Appointed Dean of Science

Neuroscientist to lead Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences division

Diversifying Diet

A little-known diet improves cardiovascular health through several distinct mechanisms. 

The Picture of Freedom

A Boston Athenaeum exhibit explores an abolitionist with Harvard ties.

More to explore

How is Artificial Intelligence Being Taught at Harvard?

A new Harvard course on artificial intelligence teaches students how to use the tool responsibly.

The Evolution of Human Fathers

Exploring the evolutionary biology of human fathers as caretakers

Civil War American Writer and Abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier

Homes of the poet and abolitionist, whose verses were said to have inspired Abraham Lincoln.