Proper attribution: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Alternate versions: Every man I meet, rather than “everyone”.
Status: Misquoted either way.

This does sound like it could be hiding in the works of Shakespeare somewhere. It’s a good thought for a character to have, very humble. However, it’s just not Shakespeare.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote this in his letters, in the late 1800’s:

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar?
It is this : Every man I meet is my master
in some point, and in that I learn of him.

It’s funny how the meaning of this quote changes depending on the subtlety of how you say it. The way Emerson wrote it, the “I learn from him” is like an added benefit. Every man is my master in some point, period, one thought, and because that it is true, I have the benefit that I can learn something. But if you were to change it and say that “every man is my master in that I learn something from him” that flips it, now you’re saying that the learning came first, and it is because of the learning that this person is your superior. That’s quite different. You need to keep it as two separate thoughts.

Proper attribution: Aldous Huxley

Saw this one go by as a bit of writer’s advice, and was honestly surprised that someone would attach the word Shakespeare to it. Really? Do people think that Shakespeare was in the habit of dishing out advice to other writers? Where exactly would he have published such a line?

The actual quote comes from Aldous Huxley in his Point Counterpoint, written in 1928.

Status: Not Shakespeare.
Source: Unknown

This one first came up on Twitter, but googling for it shows the same pattern – many quote databases, many blog post titles and Myspace pages, all attributing the quote to Shakespeare … but nobody specifying where it comes from.  Occasionally someone suggests that it came from Midsummer, but it doesn’t matter, as it doesn’t seem to have come from anything Shakespeare wrote.

However, I can’t find where it does come from.  The closest I’ve discovered is this poem:

Love Don’t Ask “what Do You Do?”
Love Only Says “You Make My Heart To Beat !”

“Love from one side hurts, but love from two sides heals.”

Love Don’t Ask “Why Are You Faraway?”
Love Only Says “You Are Always With Me !”

This passage shows up on a number of pages, that appear to be Pakistani in origin.  It is always quoted the same, but never attributed to any source, just “a poem”.  So I’m not sure if it’s one person who copied it in a number of places, or if I’m just losing something in the translation.

Anybody got any ideas?

Presenting NotByShakespeare.com!

Regular readers will remember my ongoing quest to stop people from attributing things to Shakespeare that he didn’t say.  First came the blog post, then the e-book.  Well the hits (or should I say misses?) just kept on coming, far faster than I could keep the book updated.  So I thought it would make a neat blog of its own to track down these quotes and go into more detail about why they’re not accurate.  Plus, I was finding that a number of quotes I could not properly identify, so this gives more people a chance to comment and help track down the rightful authors.

Hope you like it!

Had an odd dream last night that I was hanging out at the bookstore, in the Shakespeare section of course, when two girls – maybe 6 years old? – started discussing Sonnet 18.  Specifically one of them, the smarty pants (and one of them is always the smarty pants) is trying to explain to her friend that you need to only read the first and last lines and you’ll know what it means.  So they read “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?  So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”  She then naturally decide that, because the person is like summer, she’ll live forever because summer always comes back.  Her friend does not seem convinced.

“You have to read the middle too,” I tell them.  Then, so I’m not the random stranger talking to little kids without permission, I explain to their mother that my own children started Shakespeare with this sonnet as well.  That gets us into a discussion about which plays to start with (Tempest and Midsummer, ‘natch) before I am awakened to reality, ironically, enough, by one of my own children.  She is having her own bad dream that the aliens have come to take her away.