Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Carol Ochs seeks a citation for “All science, all religion began with the innovator, the nonconformist, the heretic.” She writes, “In the 1950s, it was on the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review with a photo of a sculpture of a hand reaching up.”

Thomas Burrows hopes, after a half-century of searching, that someone can provide him with the source of the following assertion, delivered by Professor Frank Moore Cross during an elementary Hebrew course: “It was a saying of the ancient rabbis that you may as well learn Hebrew now because you will need it in the world to come.”

George Bason wishes to know who first declared, “Lazy people take the most pains,” and what he or she meant by it.

More queries from the archives:

“Words are walls between us / Difficult to scale— / Guardians of self / That make a jail.”

“Elephants coming two by two each as big as a launch in tow…”

“Memory is an old woman who saves dirty rags and throws away pearls and diamonds.”

“Admit impediments” (September-October). Thomas Ehrlich was the first to identify this quotation from the sonnet “Admit impediments” written by Norma (Holzman) Farber, A.M. ’32, in response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.

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

Click here for the November-December 2014 issue table of contents

You might also like

Salsa Squared

Latin dancing fills the streets in Harvard Square   

On the Margins

Filmmaker John Armstrong’s “outdoor adventures” find the human spirit.

Pony Plunges

Scrapbooking a woman who rode horses into the sea

Most popular

Intellectual Entrepreneurs

Three Harvard Advocate alumni helped found a highbrow literary periodical.

The Downsides of Prozac

Harvard researchers discuss the side effects of Prozac and other SSRIs

Making Money Funny

Matt Levine’s spunky Bloomberg column

Explore More From Current Issue

How Harvard Students Handle Political Disagreements

The Undergraduate asks if intellectualism is really on life support.

Saluting the 2025 Centennial Medalists

Four alumni of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are honored.

The Woman Who Rode Horses Into the Water

Scrapbooking a woman who rode horses into the sea