11. Common Misquotations
These are excusable in talk, but not in print. A few pieces are given correctly, with the usual wrong words in brackets.
An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own. (poor)
Fine by degrees and beautifully less. (small)
That last infirmity of noble mind. (the: minds)
Make assurance double sure. (doubly)
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. (fields)
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. (quote)
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy. (cud)
When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war. (Greek meets Greek: comes)
A goodly apple rotten at the heart. (core)
12. Uncommon Misquotations of Well-known Passages or Phrases
It is still worse to misquote what is usually given right, however informal the quotation. The true reading is here added in brackets.
Now for the trappings and the weeds of woe.–S. Ferrier. (suits)
She had an instinctive knowledge that she knew her, and she felt her genius repressed by her, as Julius Caesar's was by Cassius.–S. Ferrier. (My genius is rebuked as, it is said, Mark Antony's was by Caesar)
The new drama represented the very age and body of the time, his form and feature.–J. R. Green. (pressure)
He lifts the veil from the sanguinary affair at Kinchau, and we are allowed glimpses of blockade-running, train-wrecking and cavalry reconnaissance, and of many other moving incidents by flood and field.–Times. (accidents)
To him this rough world was but too literally a rack.–Lowell. (who would, upon the rack of this tough world, stretch him out longer)
Having once begun, they found returning more tedious than giving o'er.–Lowell. (returning were as tedious as go o'er)
Posthaec [sic] meminisse juvabit.–Hazlitt, (et haec olim)
Quid vult valde vult. What they do, they do with a will.–Emerson. (quod) Quid is not translatable.
Then that wonderful esprit du corps, by which we adopt into our self-love everything we touch.–Emerson. (de)
Let not him that putteth on his armour boast as him that taketh it off.–Westminster Gazette. (girdeth, harness, boast himself, he, putteth)
