“My man Friday.”

The book by Daniel Defoe that is usually referred to with the shortened name Robinson Crusoe became a bestseller soon after it was first published on April 25, 1719. The…

“Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.”

In the 1920s, Sinclair Lewis became one of the most successful writers in America. During that decade he penned a series of five hugely popular novels: Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith,…

Sherlock Holmes quotes that Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock did and didn’t say…

Naturally, some of the best known Sherlock Holmes quotations and catchphrases come from the classic detective stories written by Sherlock’s creator, British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). For example,…

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

You may not recall the name Eric Blair, but you’re almost certainly aware of his pen name, George Orwell. His novels Animal Farm and 1984 have sold tens of millions…

“The rich are different”… The legendary “exchange” between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway…

If you’re a quotation buff, you’ve probably heard of a legendary exchange about “rich people” that supposedly took place between the American novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and Ernest Hemingway…

The awful origin of “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

On March 7, 1839 the play Richelieu: or, the Conspiracy, by the British politician and author, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre in London. Few people today…

“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

I’m a big fan of the Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel The Godfather and the movie that was made from it in 1972. I am also a big fan of vintage…

10 famous quotes and phrases linked to the date January 10

1. and 2. “The die is cast.” and “cross the Rubicon” “The die is cast” was Julius Caesar’s famous remark on January 10, 49 B.C. as he led his troops…

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…”

Three years after Jack Kerouac coined the term “The Beat Generation” a group of Beat poets gathered at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street in San Francisco for a poetry…

“Prose = words in their best order; — poetry = the best words in the best order.”

Most of the best-known quotes by the British poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge come from his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (1816). But…