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A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words
Robert Day seeks the name of the author who wrote "Look not for mind in women. At their best, sweetness and wit!"
Shohig Sherry Terzian asks who said, "The rest is exquisite moonshine." She thinks it may have been George Santayana.
Mary Raitt hopes someone can direct her to a copy of a one-page tract entitled A Priceless Diamond, originally published in 1850.
George Nye is searching for the source of the quotation "The living stream lies deep below, and flows. And cannot cease to flow."
Richard Abeles asks who first said, "I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
Nancy Mehler wants to find the complete text of the poem that includes the lines "Remember when the night before the war/we saw Nijinsky dance at Covent Garden?"
"be sincere and seem so" (July-August). John Martin identified André Gide as the author of this quotation, from L'immoraliste. It appears on page 428 of the 1958 Gaillimard edition.
"leopards break into the temple" (September-October). Ulrich Baer identified this reference to number 20 in Franz Kafka's set of aphorisms, "Reflections on Sin, Hope, Pain, and the True Way." Paul Cantor located the text and translation in a collection of Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes (Schocken, 1961), pages 92-93.