Sorry, you what? You mean Pterry was not the first with the phrase?
“A lie can be half way round the world before the truth has got its boots on”
From Sisu:
*”Lies get halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
Sigh.
Ah well, even if all the good lines are taken, there’s no shame in quoting Winnie.
In
I’m almost certain that line appears in Mark Twain’s lecture/essay on lying, which also contains this gem:
“Whoever said that a lie cannot live didn’t know how to tell one.”
Ahem. “Almost certain.” Yes, the line has long been attributed to Twain, but was actually first published in an 1855 sermon, which cites it as an old proverb. (It’s “boots,” not “shoes.”) The other line is apparently a comment on Carlyle.
http://www.twainquotes.com/Lies.html
Thanks for that. I’m always interested in how these phrases resonate down the ages. “Standing on the shoulders of giants” was not just an Oasis album, nor a just a snarky comment by Newton, it goes at least back to Bernard of Clairvaux (Claireaux?) and refers to Plato and Aristotle. Fascinating stuff, language.
Sorry you don’t accept HTML comments. I had wanted to reference you to my post “Mark Twain would have been a blogger.” You can check it out by clicking on my name at the bottom of this comment. And don’t forget, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. 🙂
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