---Shirt never worn by Flummery O'Connor.
Posted on 02/13/2019 9:16:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
We've all heard Albert Einstein's famous line: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." As it turns out, insanity might be crediting that quote to Einstein over and over again. He never said it.
Misattributions like this happen pretty often. One person quotes someone else without a shoutout, and all of a sudden, they become the original speaker. Or we just decide a quote sounds like something Mark Twain would say.
These 12 surprising examples are credited to people who never really said them.
1. "Let them eat cake." — not Marie Antoinette
Not only did Marie Antoinette not utter these words, if she had, everyone probably misunderstood her.
In Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Book 6" of his 12-volume autobiographical work, "Confessions," he writes, "At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the countrypeople had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat pastry!" according to Phrase Finder.
Most people assume "great princess" refers to Marie Antoinette. But Rousseau wrote those words in 1767 — when Marie Antoinette was 12 years old. She also didn't marry Louis XVI until 1770.
Even if Marie Antoinette did utter the phrase, the original version in French, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," means "Let them eat brioche" — a type of crumbly French pastry (not unlike cake but not totally the same) eaten by the upperclass. The misinterpreted quote portrays Marie Antoinette as a callous patrician, unconcerned with the plight of the poor. But she could have meant the wealthy should stop monopolizing food and share with the lower classes — if she said it.
Other sources credit Marie-Therese, Marie Antoinette's eldest child (and the wife of Louis XIV).
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
This is what happens when the internet replaces Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
Here’s another one that got mis-attributed (which I really wished he ACTUALLY SAID ):
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there. . . . in her fertile fields and bound less forests—and it was not there. . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there. . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
— NOT Alexis D’ Tocqueville
Here’s another one — the so called Prayer of Saint Francis of Asissi
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.”
It was entirely absent from St. Francis’ writings, the prayer in its present form has not been traced back further than 1912.
I’m sure that must be false.
It’s like the “Help me to change the things I can change” prayer, which conveniently deletes the supernatural, just like Jefferson’s “bible.”
Apparently, Reagan did say, “A great man is a good man.” According to Peggy Noonan, anyway.
“Just put your lips together...and bow.”
“I pledge a lesson to the frog of the United States of America, and to the wee puppet for witches’ hands. One Asian, in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all.”
Chinese child who is just learning English, in Bette Bao Lord’s book “The Year of the Boar and Jack Robinson”
---Shirt never worn by Flummery O'Connor.
“brioche” is sweet bread (not cake, not pastry either)
“pain” is bread. “pain perdu” = “lost bread,” what we call French Toast.
If she actually said that, that’s even nastier than saying “let them eat ‘brioche’” rather than “let them eat ‘pain’”
I’m putting quotes around ‘pain’ to make it clear I mean the French and not the English word.
I took music history around 2004 from a man whose specialty was Wolfgang Mozart.
Marie Antoinette was a young adult friend of child prodigy Mozart. My instructor thus knew her history as well.
My teacher stated that she was innocently trying to be helpful and compassionate:
She knew that this recipe was simple, and that the ingredients were cheap and easy to get. She wanted the masses to be able to feed themselves.
not- Nancy Pelosi
“ I don’t know where I’ll be, Doc, he said, but I won’t smell too good that’s for sure.”
-not Manfred Mann
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.