Source: Stranger in a Strange Land
“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.”
“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
“Delirium, dream, death—Three-D. What was the fourth?”
Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 3 “Uluru” (p. 45)
“Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.”
Source: Literature and Dogma (1873), Ch. 1
“To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.”
Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)
Last words (Jefferson died on 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence)
A few accounts declare that he asked on the night of the third: "Is it the fourth?" Most accounts declare the cited words were his last, and that he died a few hours before John Adams, whose last words are reported to have been: "Thomas — Jefferson — still surv — " or "Thomas Jefferson still survives.".
1820s
“The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.”
Occasionally attributed to Walters; actually coined by Stan Barstow.
Misattributed
