
The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1857), Revenge
Of Revenge
Essays (1625)
The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1857), Revenge
Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 34 (p. 302)
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
No known citation to Marx. First appears unattributed in mid-1960s logic/computing texts as an example of the difficulty of machine parsing of ambiguous statements. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?client=firefox-a&lr=&as_brr=0&q=%22fruit-flies%22+%22time+flies%22+banana&btnG=Search+Books&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1970. The Yale Book of Quotations dates the attribution to Marx to a 9 July 1982 net.jokes post on Usenet.
Misattributed
“In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow — and that is likely to hurt.”
Posthumous Pieces (1968)
“Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.”
"Anactoria", line 115.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)
“Trying to be Sherlock Holmes is like trying to catch an arrow in mid-flight.”
As related at Playing Holmes http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/sherlock-holmes/features/playing-holmes-in-progress
From Miscellaneous Thoughts, lines 283-290 ; as contained in The Poetical Works of Samuel Butler: A Revised Edition with Memoir and Notes, Volume 2, Samuel Butler, G. Bell & Sons (1893), pp. 275-276
The Higher Courage http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/highercourage.html, st. 7 (1840).