Noel Coward, British actor, playwright, composer (1899-1973)
The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.
Charles Schwab, US industrialist (1862-1939)
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul Valery, French poet, critic (1871-1945)
Make a resolution not to become suspicious when you hear people laughing.
David Firth, British management author (b. 1949)
Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
Victor Borge, Danish entertainer, pianist (1909-2000)
First you have to have fun. Second, you have to put love where your labour is. Third, you have to go in the opposite direction to everyone else.
Anita Roddick, British retail executive, founder of The Body Shop (1942-2007)
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher (1889-1951)
A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men.
Willie Wonka, character in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ by Roald Dahl, British author (1916-1990)
We’re all working harder and faster. But unless we’re also having fun the transformation doesn’t work.
Jack Welch, US executive, utility chief (b. 1935)
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.
Geisel Theodor Seuss, known as Dr Seuss, US author (1904-1991)
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Nicholas Butler, US educator, Nobel Peace Prize winner (1862-1947)
If you have twenty-five priorities, you have none. And if you don’t know it, your customers do.
Jan Carlzon, Swedish businessman, airline executive (b. 1941)
Jan Carlzon
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker, US management author (1909-2005)
Suppose you were taking a course in parachuting and there were 100 things to learn to do successfully. You correctly identified 99 of these 100 items on the written test. But on your first jump, you couldn’t remember how to pull the rip cord, which was the item you missed. You’d probably earn a posthumous A for the course from most teachers, but it wouldn’t bring you back from the dead. If you want to jump safely, worry less about your test score and worry about what’s important and what’s not. Then learn and do the important things.
Wess Roberts, US author (b. 1946)
Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist, poet (1803-1882)
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.
Woody Allen, US film actor, director (b. 1935)
A man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on.
The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.
Humphry Davy, British chemist (1778-1829)
Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success.
John Keats, British poet (1795-1821)
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
William Faulkner, US author (1897-1962)
There could be no honour in sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.
T E Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, British soldier, author (1888-1935)
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.
Confucius, Chinese philosopher, teacher (551-479 BC)
Failures are like skinned knees – painful, but superficial.
Henry Ross Perot, US executive, Presidential candidate (b. 1930)
If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.
Mary Pickford, US actress (1893-1979)
There’s only one way you can fail, and that’s to quit.
Bertie Charles Forbes, British journalist, founder of Forbes Magazine (1880-1954)
If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.
Thomas John Watson, US businessman, founder of IBM (1874-1956)
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
Herman Hesse, German author, poet (1877-1962)
Failing is good, as long as it doesn’t become a habit.
Michael Eisner, US executive, Walt Disney Corporation (b. 1942)
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
Henry Ford, US automobile manufacturer, engineer (1863-1947)
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist, poet (1801-1882)
An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
Charles F Kettering, US engineer, inventor (1876-1958)
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with some rain.
Dolly Parton, US singer, actress (b. 1946)
To err is human; to blame it on the other guy is even more human.
Bob Goddard, US physicist, rocketry pioneer (1882-1945)
Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, ‘I have failed three times,’ and what happens when he says, ‘I am a failure.’
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa, Canadian-Japanese scholar, senator (1906-1992)
If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.
Quentin Crisp, British author (1908-1999)
Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one’s horse as it is leaping.
Julius Hare, British author (1795-1855)
I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get ‘em, get ‘em right, or they will get you wrong.
Thomas Fuller, English preacher, scholar, author (1608-1661)
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known as Mark Twain, US author (1835-1910)
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
John Quincy Adams, US President (1767-1848)
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley, British author (1894-1963)
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts – for support rather than illumination.
Andrew Lang, British author (1844-1912)
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don’t, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
Jessamyn West, US novelist (1903-1984)
People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
Robert Keith Leavitt, US advertising executive, author (1895 -1967)
No great marketing decisions have ever been made on quantitative data.
John Sculley, US businessman, computers & drinks (b. 1939)
Information is pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.
Clarence Day, US author (1874-1935)
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, however suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
This diversion on malapropisms is prompted by a recent real-life example from my sister. Searching for an alternative to a wedding hat she went to a milliner and asked to see their fornicators.
For now, I’ll leave you to work outwhat she meant, as I will with the examples below – answers to all at the foot of this posting.
First, though a definition: a malpropism is the subsititution of one word or phrase for another that sounds similar, usually with comic effect. Malapropisms are almost always unintended, whether spoken in real life or in fiction. The word originates from a fictional character with a habitual tendency forchoosing the wrong word, Mrs Malaprop from Richard Sheridan’s play The Rivals. Here are my two favourites from Mrs Malaprop:
He is the very pineapple of politeness.
She’s as headstrong as a allegory on the banks of the Nile.
Sheridan, however, writing in the eighteenth century, was by no means the first to use malaproprisms to send up his own characters and highlight their lack of education. One of the best pre-Sheridan examples comes from Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing, where the constable Dogberry has the affliction:
Comparisons are odorous.
Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons.
Shakespeare makes frequent use of the technique for his low or artisan characters (Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Elbow in Measure for Measure, Launcelot in A Merchant of Venice, the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet ). Charles Dickens does the same, most famously with Mrs Sarah Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit:
It’s murder, and I’m the witness for the persecution.
These days malapropism is not so much used by playwrights and novelists, but has become something of a modern tradition among comedians and comic characters. Here are some twentieth- and twenty-first century examples:
She said honesty was the best politics. (Stan Laurel)
I heard the ocean is infatuated with sharks. (Stan Laurel)
You mean infuriated. (Oliver Hardy)
I can say that without fear of contraception. (Hylda Baker)
What are you incinerating? (Harold in Steptoe & Son)
I myself often use the wrong worms, and that is why I was erected Charming of the Society (Ronnie Barker)
Good to be back on the old terracotta. (Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses)
Shuffling from shell shock (Steve Delaney as Count Arthur Strong)
Get back in your sauce for the goose for another million years. (Count Arthur Strong)
Brudder, you got a preposition, and that thing will give you a conclusion of the brain. (Bugs Bunny)
Where are my mannerisms? (Tigger in Winnie the Pooh)
Let’s talk about a very tattoo subject. (Ali G)
The ironing is delicious. (Bart in The Simpsons)
In her elastic stockings, next to her very close veins. (Archie Bunker)
Patence is a virgin. (Archie Bunker)
I was given an old tomato, leave or get thrown out. (Will and Grace)
Do you take this man to be your awful wedded husband? (Rowan Atkinson as the vicar in Four Weddings and a Funeral – a steal from Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas)
Malapropism is not purely the province of the fictional character. Wherever there is a mouth to put a foot in ... here are a few real-life examples from the modern era, first some well-known names:
On a day of atonement I can’t afford to be sick. (golfer Sam Snead)
I might just fade into Bolivian, know what I mean? (boxer Mike Tyson)
We’re all in the same bucket. (football manager Sir Bobby Robson)
The King of Spain (erroneously printed on mugs commemorating the testimonial of England spin bowler Ashley Giles)
Upsetting the apple tart of our economic success (politician Bertie Ahern)
I never condemn wrongdoing in any area (Bertie Ahern again)
Welcome to President Bush, Mrs Bush and my fellow astronauts (politician Dan Quayle)
Refudiate, misunderestimate, wee-weed up. English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it. (A tweet sent by politician Sarah Palin in response to being ridiculed for inventing new words – proudly transposing her ignorance onto the side of literary genius.)
And from forum postings (thanks to the contributors):
They are nice condoms.
She’ll be talking about one thing, and then goes off on a tandem to change the subject.
She fired a shot across his bowels.
My son had a wart removed – they gave him a local euthenasia.
It’s a storm ina teapot.
He’s a student at the University of Vagina
He’s a wolf in cheap clothing.
The swine flu has reached pandemonium stage.
Finally, one from a conference menu that misuses the same word as the eponymous Mrs Malaprop:
If you suffer from any allegories, please make these known to the catering staff.
OK did you identify and mentally correct all the malapropisms in this posting? Here’s a checklist. If you have spotted any that are not on the checklist, they’re probably (unintentionally) mine.
Fornicators Fascinators
Pineapple Pinnacle
Allegory Alligator
Odorous Odious
Comprehended Apprehended
Auspicious Suspicious
Persecution Prosecution
Politics Policy
Infatuated/Infuriated Infested
Contraception Contradiction
Incinerating Insinuating
Worms Words
Erected Elected
Charming Chairman
Terracotta Terra Firma
Shuffling Suffering
Sauce for the goose Sarcophagus
Preposition Proposition
Conclusion Contusion
Mannerisms Manners
Tattoo Taboo
Ironing Irony
Very close veins Varicose veins
Virgin Virtue
Old tomato Ultimatum
Awful Lawful
Atonement A tournament
Bolivian Oblivion
Bucket Boat
King of Spain King of Spin
Apple tart Apple cart
Condemn Condone
Astronauts Americans
Refudiate Repudiate
Misunderestimate Underestimate
Wee-weed up Geed up
Condoms Condominiums
Tandem Tangent
Bowels Bows
Euthenasia Anaesthetic
Teapot Teacup
University of Vagina University of Virginia
Cheap clothing Sheep’s clothing
Pandemonium Pandemic
Allegories Allergies
And here, for a bit of fun, is the whole of Ronnie Barker’s fabulous Mispronunciation sketch.
A Zen master once asked an audience of Westerners what they thought was the most important word in the English language. After giving his listeners the chance to think about such favourites as love, truth, failure and so on, he said, ‘No, it’s a three letter word: it’s the word let. Let it be. Let in happen.’
W Timothy Gallwey, US author (b. 1938)
There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.
Warren Bennis, US academic, management author (b. 1925)
Warren Bennis
What we call leadership consists maily of knowing how to follow. The wise leader stays in the background and facilitates other people’s process.
John Heider, US management author (b. 1960)
There are no problem people, only problem facilitators, who can’t cope with energy and creativity.
