Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python.
Interview with Nick Harper in The Guardian (28 November 2003).
Interview with Nick Harper in The Guardian (28 November 2003).
“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”
On a Dull Writer, reported in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Alternately attributed to Alexander Pope by Bartlett's Quotations, 10th Edition (1919). Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303
Disputed
“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”
Credited as Epigram: An Empty House (1727), or On a Dull Writer; alternately attributed to Jonathan Swift in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303.
Misattributed
“Nothing beats 2 guitars, drum and bass.”
In the liner notes of New York
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGPoJvQhhKk at 2:56
As quoted in The Quotable Politician https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/159228132X, William B. Whitman, Global Pequot (2003), p. 60.
Letter to H. R. Haldeman
“You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault.”
Soul Singer in a Session Band
Cassadaga (2007)
“The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.”
Nothing Will Die (1830)
Context: When will the stream be aweary of flowing
Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And nature die?
Never, oh! never, nothing will die;
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.
“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.”
Source: A Writer's Diary
