Main Menu · Search ·Current Issue ·Contact ·Archives ·Centennial ·Letters to the Editor ·FAQs
A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words
James Propp seeks the source of the statement "A dividing line is none the worse for being broad."
Harris Hartz asks who said "Adolescence is the age between ignorance and hypocrisy."
Douglas Freelander is looking for a short story in which the following line appears: "Dissolute and damned, the whole student body and the faculty!"
Merrill Orne Young inquires after the story of a British general who, before going into battle, asked for a short proof of the truth of Christian religion, to which a chaplain replied, "The Jews, sir."
Jack Miles would like to know the source of the line "I need Christianity to keep my servants honest."
Katherine Kurs seeks the source of the phrase "as elusive as the heaven of the Jews."
James Rini requests the origin of the phrase "down and dirty."
Michael Sterner would like to find the first lines of the poem that continues, "Truth ever lies/In mean compromise./ What could be subtler/Than the thought of Samuel Butler?"
Glenn Paige asks for the origin of the statement "A science that hesitates to overturn its founders is lost."
"on whom I look full oft" (July-August). Anthony Shipps found the full text of this untitled poem among sixteenth-century author George Gascoigne's work, in a book entitled The Posies (1907).
"more precious than gold" (July-August). Michael Comenetz was first to find this quotation in the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin," citing Grimms' Tales for Young and Old, translated by Ralph Manheim (1977).