“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy
“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.”
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
“Look at that little monkey run!”
During the Halftime Highlights segment of Monday Night Football on September 24, 1973 when describing a 97-yard kickoff return by Washington Redskins player Herb Mul-Key against the St. Louis Cardinals.
At The Zoo
Song lyrics, Bookends (1968)
"Great Thought" (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
Context: There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)