Quote magnets revisited

[Laurence Horn]

As we know, everything that wasn't said by Shakespeare, Benjamin
Franklin, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, or Groucho Marx was said by
Dorothy Parker.  Listening to _Clouds of Witness_ (Dorothy L. Sayers,
1926) on audiobook, I was struck by a wonderful adage that is as
applicable to linguistic research as in many other domains. Bunter is
addressing Lord Peter Wimsey:

"[My old mother] always says, my lord, that facts are like cows. If
you look them in the face hard enough, they generally run away."

I was wondering whether others noticed this dictum as well, and in
googling "Facts are like cows" found that indeed it had 650 hits, and
also that at least three of them attribute it to Dorothy Parker.
Half credit, I guess.

LH

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org