Patricia Stoltey

Author

The Search for Good Ideas

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I wanted to use the quote, “No good deed goes unpunished,” in a story, and it occurred to me that although I use the phrase from time to time, I had no idea of its origin. I pulled my copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations from my bookcase and found the phrase first in the index under “unpunished.”

When I followed the page reference back to the quotations, I was disappointed. The source is anonymous. That piqued my interest, however, and I found almost twenty pages of song verses, sayings, proverbs, and rhymes for which the authors are not known.

These seem especially relevant for the times:

“Keeping up with the Joneses.”
…..Popular saying

“A fool and his money are soon parted.”
…..English proverb

“Use it up, wear it out;
Make it do, or do without.”
…..New England maxim

“You can’t use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!
…..Remark — Made by an unidentified cabinet member (possibly Secretary of the Interior Jacob Dolson Cox (1828-1900), quoted by Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ch. 17.

“It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.”
…..The Chicago Times (1861)

If you have a copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations in your own reference library, you can find a lot of good article and essay material. For instance, did you know that Henry David Thoreau is credited with this:

“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.”
…..Journal [1906], September 7, 1851

But in similar words, so is the Bible (Proverbs), Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Wellington, and then, finally, Franklin Roosevelt.

The ideas from all this? Articles on personal finance and why people should pay attention to those old sayings. An essay on fear, or simple truths that survive centuries of change. Or a political blog about congressmen who need to be smacked on the snout.

Have a great weekend.

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Comments

  6. I love quotes and sayings and finding out where they originated. “It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.” I sure wish this is what newspapers still did. Maybe they’d be more popular today if they didn’t simply spew their owner’s political beliefs.

    JaneKennedySutton

  9. Bartlett’s is fun to crack open once in a while, just to see what gems catch my attention. It’s one more place to find a great idea for a story, too. And it makes an interesting answer to folks who ask, “Where do you get your ideas?”

  11. I’ve incorporated a number of quotes from the Bible in my book Breakthrough to give the reader a sense that something of significance was on the immediate horizon.

    Case in point, I used, “You cannot put new wine into old wine skins” as a message in an email to a state senator who was about to be murdered for attempting to impede a particular progressive breakthrough. He preferred traditional and to keep the status quo.

    So using quotes is a great way to place emphasis on a particular section or idea, or to let the reader know something big is about to happen.

    – Stephen Tremp
    http://stephentremp.blogspot.com/