Many literary quotes have worked their way into everyday conversation due to their ability to capture basic human truths or much-loved
characters. But in a lot of cases it seems we are unknowingly misquoting them.
Here are a few of the most common errors:
1. "Elementary, my dear Watson"
Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories
contain a number of ‘elementaries’ and a handful of ‘my dear Watsons’, the
phrase ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ never actually appears in the books.
2. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"
The line from William Congreve’s 1697 poem The Mourning
Bride is ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned/Nor hell a fury like a
woman scorned.’
It seems a shame to lose the first half of the couplet in the
misquotation, but the addition of ‘hath’ gives it a charming Olde Worlde feel.
3. "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble"
Or even ‘hubble, bubble’ to many! Interestingly, the witches
at the opening of Shakespeare’s Macbeth actually say “Double, double, toil and
trouble”, referring not so much to the bubbling cauldron but to the toil and trouble that is being multiplied by their incantation.
4. "Please, Sir, can I have some more?"
In Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, the orphan rises from the
table, advances towards the master and says "Please, sir, I want some
more.", the same line that is used in the 1968 musical film Oliver!
Perhaps we modified it to make poor Oliver seem more polite...
5. "Shaken, not stirred"
Ian Fleming’s James Bond asks a barman in Dr No for "A
medium Vodka dry Martini – with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred”. Ok, so it's just a single word that has been left out but the line “shaken, not stirred” has now been used
so often in the Bond films that it's become ingrained in our image of Bond.
Source: The Telegraph
