Looking for a Winston Churchill Quote
Mthebby
about how one shouldn't end phrases with a preposition (sorry I can't recall
any more details than that).
Thanks in advance to anyone who posts it on this group!
Darren Chng
"This is the kind of ______ up with which I will not put."
or something to that effect.
rgds
darren
What is success? It is a toy balloon among children
armed with pins.
- Gene Fowler
Richard I. Pelletier
<chn...@singnet.com.sg> wrote:
> On 19 Dec 1999 13:20:59 GMT, mth...@aol.com (Mthebby) wrote:
>
> >Heard a quote from Winston Churchill this week that was sort of a play on
> >words
> >about how one shouldn't end phrases with a preposition (sorry I can't recall
> >any more details than that).
> >
> >Thanks in advance to anyone who posts it on this group!
> "This is the kind of ______ up with which I will not put."
>
> or something to that effect.
>
Yes.
Along the same line, there is a story about a little boy whose father
reads to him every night; the boy's bedroom is upstairs. One night as
his father walks into the room the boy says, "I hope you didn't bring
the book I don't want to be read to out of up."
or something to that effect.
Vale,
Rip
--
Multiplication is not commutative before breakfast.
Richard I. Pelletier
NB eddress: r i p 1 [at] h o m e [dot] c o m
Dave Kifer
>
>Heard a quote from Winston Churchill this week that was sort of a play on words
>about how one shouldn't end phrases with a preposition (sorry I can't recall
>any more details than that).
>
>Thanks in advance to anyone who posts it on this group!
From _The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill_ by James C. Humes,
a Churchill biographer and lecturer. Almost at the end of the
book, in a section called "Escapades and Encounters":
"A priggish civil servant had corrected and returned a Churchill
memorandum, pointing out that the prime minister had mistakenly
ended a sentence with a preposition.
Back it went to the officious bureaucrat, with this Churchill
note appended in the margin:
"This is the sort of pedantic nonsense up with which I shall not put.""
Humes does not give a direct source for this quote, but there is
a four-page bibliography of sources in the back.
Dave [p&e]
"Tam multi libri, tam breve tempus!"
(Et brevis pecunia.) [Et breve spatium.]
Daniel P. B. Smith
Pelletier" <bitb...@home.com> wrote:
> Along the same line, there is a story about a little boy whose father
> reads to him every night; the boy's bedroom is upstairs. One night as
> his father walks into the room the boy says, "I hope you didn't bring
> the book I don't want to be read to out of up."
>
> or something to that effect.
I heard it as: "What did you bring that book I don't want to be read to
out of up for?"
--
Daniel P. B. Smith
current email address: dpbs...@bellatlantic.net
"Lifetime forwarding address:" dpbs...@alum.mit.edu
Michael Acord
will not put."
Mthebby wrote in message <19991219082059...@ng-cb1.aol.com>...
Kenneth S.
>Heard a quote from Winston Churchill this week that was sort of a play on words
>about how one shouldn't end phrases with a preposition (sorry I can't recall
>any more details than that).
>
>Thanks in advance to anyone who posts it on this group!
Churchill's draft speeches often were subjected to nitpicking
corrections by civil servants. After one such round of corrections,
several of which involved changing his sentences so that they did not
end with prepositions, Churchill is supposed to have lost patience and
said, "These are the sort of petty objections up with which I will not
put."
Richard I. Pelletier
"Daniel P. B. Smith" <dpbs...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> In article <301119970804507088%bitb...@home.com>, "Richard I.
> Pelletier" <bitb...@home.com> wrote:
>
> > "I hope you didn't bring
> > the book I don't want to be read to out of up."
> >
> > or something to that effect.
>
> I heard it as: "What did you bring that book I don't want to be read to
> out of up for?"
Thank you! I thought there might have been another preposition in that
sequence, but I couldn't seem to reinvent it.
Frank Bohan
Mthebby <mth...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19991219082059...@ng-cb1.aol.com...
> Heard a quote from Winston Churchill this week that was sort of a play on
words
> about how one shouldn't end phrases with a preposition (sorry I can't
recall
> any more details than that).
>
> Thanks in advance to anyone who posts it on this group!
Churchill had submitted a draft of an important wartime speech to
the Foreign Office for comment. The draft was returned with no
comment whatever on content; but where he had ended a sentence with
a preposition a Foreign Office purist had transferred the
preposition to its stiffly grammatical position. At this, Churchill
flew into a lather. To the offending purist, he dispatched a note:
This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.
===
Frank Bohan
BinneBrook
nonsense up with which I will not put."
Binne
Sam Hobbs
BinneBrook <binne...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19991229215305...@ng-ce1.aol.com...
Don't have a source, but the context is that Winston was criticized for
ending a sentence with a preposition and he constructed this response
(presumably on the fly) to show that sometimes grammatical "suggestions"
should be just suggestions.
Sam