Paducah sun. [volume] (Paducah, Ky.) 1???-1902, 1901-12-16
LowLY ORIGIN OF
NOBLE QUOTATIONS.

ton" of popular quotations. Many of
the finest and most beautiful aphor-
isms and sayings spring from mean
and obscure literary parentage Some
are the result of ridiculous perversion
Of the intended Specification, and a
larger number are due to deliberate or
unconscious misrepresentation. To
accident, chance remarks of inferior
writers or orators, we owe not few
Of our grandest proverbial expressions.
This general fact is emphasized and
abundantly illustrated by Prof. ].
Churton Collins, the we'll known Eng
lish critic and severe censor Of contem.
porary book reviewers, in an article ON
Popular Quotations" in the New
Liberal Review. He begins with some
instances Of perversion;
I'VE all know the famous line in
Shakespeare,
One touch Of nature makes the
whole world kim
and 3 most beautiful truth IL seems,
worthy to stand beside Terrenoe's
equally. beautiful expression of cath
ollie sentiment, Homo sum; humani
nihil me alienuD puto'-'I am a
man, and think nothing that concerns
man Indifferent to me-" But miscon-
ception and the suppression Of the
context have given its beauty to it, for
nothing could have been further from
shakespeare's intention than the
meaning which has been attached to
it. The line occurs in 'Troilus and
Cressida, and simply means that all
mankind have this in common,
that they delight in novelty.
One touch of nature makes the
whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise
newborn gawds.
Again, we all know the proverb,
AS the tree falls, there shall it lie.
supposing it to mean that mans
fate after death will be determined
by his state when he dies, thus at
taching to it a most solemn moral.
But a reference to the source Of it,
that is, the eleventh chapter Of Ec-
clesiastes, shows that nothing can be
more remote from its true meaning.
, All that is meant is that the discharge
Of rain from the clouds and the in.
clination Of a falling tree, in other
words. the times and seasons. are in
the hands Of God, and out Of the nus
bandmAn's control, and all that con-
Germs him is to be diligent about the
work which he has in hand. Another
curious peryersion, but a perversion
made as early as Seneca. Is the often
quoted Art is long and time is short.
This is the first Of the aphorisms Of
the Greek physician Hippoorates, and
what be means Is that the critical
moment when medical assistance can
be Of avail is soon PASSED. but that
medical science Is slow and lAborious.
and so not up to. time. The erroneous
substitution Of future tense for
present has given Us the celebrated
Magma est ,veritas ct praevalebit'-
Great is truth and it will prevail
The quotation is from the vulgate
version Of the forty first verse Of the
fourth chapter of Esdrss, third
book, where, IL has no such mean
ing as we, by turning q present
tense into q future, attach to it, but
simply means. great is truth and
mighty above all things. But per.
haps the most extraordinary instance
Of peryersion il the well known
English proyerb, First catch your
hare and then cook it, Il has al.
ways been assumed that this precept is
to be found in Mrs. Glasses oelebrat.
cd book on cookery, q work we'll known
to our great erandmothers. But what
Mrs. Glasse says is something very