[Ads-l] Family of sayings: The lay-offs / firings / floggings/ beatings will continue until morale improves

[Mark Mandel]

With regard to this excerpt from Garson's QI article
<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/07/15/morale/>:

A thematic precursor appeared in Voltaire’s famous novella “Candide” in
1759. The witty philosopher was aware of the unfortunate death of English
Admiral John Byng who was court-martialed and executed in 1757. Many
observers considered Byng’s punishment unjust, and Voltaire constructed a
mocking remark about the event which was spoken by Candide’s companion when
the fictional duo visited England. Here is the original French statement
followed by a translation into English. Boldface added to excepts by *QI*: 1
<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/07/15/morale/#note-438125-1>

Mais dans ce pays-ci* il est bon de tuer de tems en tems un Amiral pour
encourager les autres.*

But in this country *it is good to kill an Admiral from time to time to
encourage the others.*

Though I can't provide any sources or quotations, I've seen the French
clause "*pour encourager les autres*" used in English text a number of
times.

Mark Mandel

On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 9:38 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Way back in December 2009 I posted a message to this mailing list
> about the topic specified in the subject line.
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2009-December/094631.html
>
> Jonathan Lighter helpfully responded to my message with a pointer to a
> thematically germane remark written by Voltaire in his novella
> "Candide". Barry Popik tackled this topic in 2012. After a brief
> decade delay, I've posted an article to the Quote Investigator
> website.
>
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/07/15/morale/
>
> [Begin acknowledgement]
> QI performed a preliminary exploration of this topic back in December
> 2009. At that time, QI shared the 1966 citation with a mailing list.
> Professor Jonathan Lighter told QI about the germane Voltaire
> citation. Other mailing list discussants provided helpful feedback
> including: Wilson Gray, Seán Fitzpatrick, and Bill Palmer. In 2012
> fellow researcher Barry Popik published a beneficial webpage on the
> topic. Thanks to the volunteer editors of Wikiquote who created a
> pertinent webpage that was later deleted. Additional thanks to the
> participants at the websites Metafilter, Quora, English.Stackexchange,
> Wikiquote, and Reddit. Great thanks to Paul Rauber whose 2020 inquiry
> led QI to continue this exploration and share the results on the QI
> website.
> [End acknowledgement]
>
> Feedback welcome
> Garson O'Toole
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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