Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Lorna Hallal seeks the title and author of a work that describes children queuing for the gas chamber while a palm reader tells their fortunes. The refrain is “the wrong parents, the wrong parents.”

John Gordon writes, “I remember reading somewhere that after the 1746 Battle of Culloden, a British officer was informed that a mother and her children were outside his quarters looking for a place to spend the night, to which he responded, irritably, ‘Oh, hang ’em!’ The next morning he was startled to find that they had all been, literally, hanged. I would appreciate a source on this.”

Pete Hawkins wonders whether anyone can provide a definitive citation for a quotation widely attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: “To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.”

“no moral right to decide” (November-December 2013). Charles Hagen found “We have no right morally to decide as a matter of opinion that which can be determined as a matter of fact” in Industrial Leadership (chapter 4, “Results of Task Work,” pages 88-89), the published version of management consultant H.L. Gantt’s Page Lecture series delivered at Yale in 1915.

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

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

Studying ChatGPT Like a Psychologist

Cognitive science helps penetrate the AI “black box”

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Most popular

Diagnosis by Fiction

The “Healing Quartet,” by “Samuel Shem,” probes medicine—and life.

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy