{"id":818,"date":"2017-10-10T16:28:26","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T00:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/?p=818"},"modified":"2017-10-10T16:37:22","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T00:37:22","slug":"he-said-she-said-who-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/2017\/10\/10\/he-said-she-said-who-said\/","title":{"rendered":"He Said, She Said, Who Said?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occasionally, someone asks us at the Reference Desk to verify a quotation.\u00a0 It may be a commonly known phrase, something a famous person said, a proverb from another land, or something pretty (okay, terribly!) obscure.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 Google, right!\u00a0 But hold onto your Googs; if you try Google, you\u2019ll often find that the exact same quote \u2013 whether correct or not \u2013 ping-pongs and pinballs and pachinkos its way from blog to website to Facebook to Pinterest and back to blog ad infinitum with no authoritative source to ground it until nobody really knows whether the quote is accurate, where it originally came from, or whether it\u2019s coming or going.\u00a0 Of course, that might not matter if you share the philosophy of the Bandar-Log Monkeys in the chapter on Kaa\u2019s Hunting in the first book of Kipling\u2019s The Jungle Book<\/em>:<\/p>\n

We all say so, and so it must be true….<\/p>\n

But we rely on accuracy rather than popularity here, and having to plow through an endless number of parroting web pages just makes it all the harder to verify the authentic text and its original source.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we have what you might call the Un-Google:\u00a0 a good half dozen or so shelves of quotation books and related dictionaries and sources in the Reference Collection in the P6000\u2019s.\u00a0 It requires patience, sure, and it\u2019s far from perfect \u2014 finding an accurate quote with a confirmed provenance can be a very lengthy and difficult affair, especially when the quotation is inaccurately or only partially remembered \u2014 but at least when you find one, the source is usually given.<\/p>\n

There are general quotation compilations, such as Bartlett\u2019s Familiar Quotations<\/em>, as well as ones on very specific subjects. (Throwing Monkeys at the Coconuts<\/em>, for instance, is a collection of travel quotations, although that\u2019s one we don\u2019t have.)\u00a0 And the indexing of quotes inside the book will vary: some will be indexed by author, some by date or theme, some by the first line of the quote, and others might be by language or country. \u00a0Here are a few examples from several quotation books and specialized dictionaries in this part of the Reference Collection:<\/p>\n

REF PN6080 .C57 2001
\nThe Concise Dictionary of Foreign Quotations\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>(p. 113)
\nSi nous n\u2019avions point de d\u00e9fauts, nous ne prendrions pas tant de plaisir \u00e0 en remarquer dans les autres.
\n(If we had no failings, we would not be so pleased to notice them in others.)
\n(La Rochefoucauld: \u00a0Reflexions<\/em>)<\/p>\n

REF PN 6084 .W6 B47 1996
\nWomen\u2019s Words:\u00a0 The Columbia Book of Quotations by Women<\/em> \u00a0(p. 251)
\n\u2026 people are almost always better than their neighbours think they are.
\n(George Eliot, Middlemarch<\/em>, chapter 72)<\/p>\n

REF PN 6231 .W64 B43 2015
\nSpin-glish:\u00a0 The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language<\/em>\u00a0 (pp. 82, 232)
\nSection 1:\u00a0 Spin-glish to English definition:
\nHealth care procurement specialist:\u00a0 Insurance salesperson<\/p>\n

Section 2:\u00a0 English to Spin-glish definition:
\nUndertaker:\u00a0 After-death care provider; bereavement care expert; post-health professional.<\/p>\n

(This recent spin-quote will unfortunately have to wait for the 2nd<\/sup> edition:
\n“empowering a culture of controversy prevention.”
\nhttps:\/\/www.adn.com\/opinions\/2017\/04\/23\/oh-please-no-controversy-on-campus\/<\/a>\u00a0)<\/p>\n

REF PN 6371 .D65 1996
\nI Love Me, Vol. I
\n<\/em>Now, this title sounds rather like a multi-volume ode to narcissism, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Anyone you know?\u00a0 Can\u2019t wait for Vol. II to come out?\u00a0 Then try reading it backwards:\u00a0 it\u2019s a dictionary of palindromes!\u00a0 Many entries are rather forced \u2013 after all, palindromes are difficult! \u2013 but some are rather charming (p.231):
\nNorma is as selfless as I am, Ron<\/p>\n

Nor are palindromes restricted to English\u00a0(p. 219.):
\nNisumaa oli isasi ilo aamusin
\n(Finnish: The field of wheat was your father\u2019s joy in the morning)<\/p>\n

Hmm, I think I\u2019ll let you figure out what that one means!\u00a0 There are full word palindromes, too, not just letter-by-letter ones (p. 139):
\nGirl, bathing on Bikini, eyeing boy, finds boy eyeing bikini on bathing girl.<\/p>\n

And for those who don\u2019t care for Hawaiian music (p. 250):
\nOh, no!\u00a0 Don Ho!<\/p>\n

But if someone comes up and tells you this practically clich\u00e9 palindrome: \u00a0\u201cA man, a plan, a canal: \u00a0Panama!\u201d you can offer the perfect rejoinder given on p.227:\u00a0 \u201cNo, it\u2019s a banana bastion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, everyone knows the quotation and who said it \u2013 except when that\u2019s not the case.\u00a0 Like what?\u00a0 Well, like this popular and insightful quotation from Petronius Arbiter in about 210 B.C.:
\nWe trained hard – but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized.\u00a0 I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no note of who translated it into English \u2013 or did it even need to be translated?\u00a0 Did Petronius even write it?\u00a0 Jim Reeds looked into it and noted that Petronius Arbiter was alive in Nero\u2019s reign over 200 years later \u2013 a rather Biblical lifespan!\u00a0 Beyond that, Reeds couldn\u2019t find any citing of the quotation before 1945 or so (and that\u2019s A.D., mind you, not B.C.!).\u00a0 But what about the provenance of this revisionist information, much less the quotation itself?\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen the relevant web page myself, but\u00a0All Things Must Pass<\/em> (\u00e0 la George Harrison’s album title), and so has that web page!\u00a0 Fortunately, the Wayback Machine (www.waybackmachine.org) can come to the rescue, so here\u2019s a preserved version of the page:
\nhttp:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20050404005706\/http:\/\/www.dtc.umn.edu:80\/~reedsj\/petronius.html<\/a>
\n(You can close the banner message that appears at the top.)<\/p>\n

There are plenty of variants and translations given in the beginning, so you\u2019ll need to scroll down a bit to get to the source information about the quotation.<\/p>\n

A recent book has even been written on the subject of mistaken quotes:
\nHemingway Didn’t Say That:\u00a0 The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations<\/em> by Garson O\u2019Toole
\nhttp:\/\/www.npr.org\/2017\/04\/04\/522581148\/hemingway-didnt-say-that-and-neither-did-twain-or-kafka<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, not every good quote is collected in a quotation book, so until next time, I\u2019ll leave you with this bit of wisdom from a long ago fortune cookie:<\/p>\n

A little madness,
\nA little kindness
\nMakes for happiness<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occasionally, someone asks us at the Reference Desk to verify a quotation.\u00a0 It may be a commonly known phrase, something a famous person said, a proverb from another land, or something pretty (okay, terribly!) obscure.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 Google, right!\u00a0 But hold onto your Googs; if you try Google, you\u2019ll often find that the exact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":821,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consortiumlibrary.org\/blogs\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}