Ghost-Written Famous Quotations

[Wilson Gray]

Real or unreal?: from many sources seen over the years, W.C.Fields's
famous saying:

"I feel sorry for the man (who) doesn't drink, because, when he wakes
up in the morning, that's as good as he's going to feel, all day."

-Wilson

On 7/1/07, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Ghost-Written Famous Quotations
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >there is a first level of popular attribution, a second
> >level of some quotation dictionaries giving a better origin, then a third
> >level debunking the second-level debunkers
>
>
> In his 1977 book "The Power of Positive Nonsense" (McGraw-Hill) Leo Rosten
> attributes the phrase to himself in 1939. What level of misattribution
> debunkery would that be? But seriously folks... Perhaps 38 years after the
> fact Rosten misremembered either the date or the non-originality of the
> line?
> DAD
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Fred Shapiro
> Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2007 9:36 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Ghost-Written Famous Quotations
>
> On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, David A. Daniel wrote:
>
> > I don't know (a) if this is the sort of thing you are looking for, or (b)
> > old hat, but there is the famous "Anyone who hates dogs and babies can't
> be
> > all bad", usually attributed to W.C. Fields but actually said by Leo
> Rosten
> > about Fields at a Masquers' Club roast in Field's honor.
>
> In this query I was looking for famous quotations actually coined by
> speechwriters and the like, rather than other types of misattributions.
>
> Note that the Yale Book of Quotations documents Bryan Darnton saying "No
> man who hates dogs and children can be all bad" in 1937, prior to the Leo
> Rosten usage.  This is an example of a common situation in quotation
> scholarship, where there is a first level of popular attribution, a second
> level of some quotation dictionaries giving a better origin, then a third
> level debunking the second-level debunkers.  The Yale Book of Quotations
> and Ralph Keyes's books and the efforts of some of the people on ADS-L are
> the only sources that make it to the third level to any appreciable
> extent. Sometimes Nigel Rees's publications make it there.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
> Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
>    Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
> Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
> e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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