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Our Daily Bleg: More Quote Authors Uncovered

Four weeks ago I invited readers to submit quotations for which they wanted me to try to trace the origins, using The Yale Book of Quotations and more recent research by me. Dozens responded via comments or e-mails. I am responding as best I can, a couple per week.
Bill asks:

I think that this is from Ambrose Bierce, but I haven’t been able to track it down. “Definition — cigarette: a small roll of paper, filled with tobacco and drugs, having a small flame at one end, and a large fool at the other.”

I’m not sure about the Bierce quote, but The Yale Book of Quotations has the following under Jonathan Swift:

[Of angling:] A stick and a string, with a fly at one end and a fool at the other.


It was quoted in The Indicator, Oct. 27, 1819. A similar remark has also been attributed to Samuel Johnson.

Authors Uncovered

75 ThumbnailHere are more quote authors Shapiro’s tracked down recently.

H.F.Hunter asks whether the following quote is by Daniel Boone:

“I can’t say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.” … I’ve always felt a special kinship to Daniel. I’ll be real disappointed if I learn that someone else said that.

No need to be disappointed! The Yale Book of Quotations has this under Boone:

[Remark, June 1819:] I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

It was quoted in Chester Harding, My Egotistigraphy (1866).
Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?


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