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…
Category: Literature
“The shot heard round the world”
The famous phrase “The shot heard round the world” was coined by American essayist, lecturer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) in 1837. It’s the last line in the first…
“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,…
The genesis of “the Almighty Dollar” – from Genesis to Washington Irving…
The word almighty, used in connection with God, appears 57 times in the King James Version of the Bible. Starting in the Book of Genesis, God is variously referred to…
“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…
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…
“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…
“England’s green and pleasant land”
If you’re not British, you may only be vaguely aware of the song “Jerusalem.” But the tune and lyrics are very familiar to the people of England. It is England’s…