[Ads-l] Warning to Quotographers: Suspicious Hemingway byline in Playboy

[Peter Reitan]

A 1911 example (The Indianapolis News, December 12, 1911, page 6 (Newspapers.com)) credits the quote to an old "Hindoo proverb".  It also provides an alternate Tennyson quote that suggests a similar sentiment to the second part of the proverb:


"I held it truth, with him who sings

To one clear harp in divers tones,

That men may rise on stepping-stones

Of their dead selves to higher things."


>From part I of Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., the same poem in which he wrote, "tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."



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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2017 12:05 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Warning to Quotographers: Suspicious Hemingway byline in Playboy

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Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Warning to Quotographers: Suspicious Hemingway byline in Playboy
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I received two requests to examine the following quotation which is
often ascribed to Ernest Hemingway:

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true
nobility is being superior to your former self.

An instance appears in the April 1897 issue of "Ethical Addresses".
This date was two years before the birth of Hemingway. Earlier
citations would be welcome.

An instance also appears in the January 1963 issue of Playboy magazine
within an article titled "A Man=E2=80=99s Credo" with the byline Ernest
Hemingway. However, English Professor Peter L. Hays, a Hemingway
specialist, believes that the byline is false.

More details here:
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/11/superior/

Garson

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