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arts / rec.arts.sf.written / [OT] Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dan Quayle

[OT] Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dan Quayle

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Subject: [OT] Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dan Quayle
From: jsavard@ecn.ab.ca (Quadibloc)
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by: Quadibloc - Sat, 4 Nov 2023 23:19 UTC

I just learned that the famous couplet

'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all

wasn't from somewhere in Shakespeare after all... but was instead from
a poem which was very famous and popular back in the Victorian era,
_In Memoriam_, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Ah, according to Wikipedia, he is the Right Honourable Lord Alfred
Tennyson, first Baron Tennyson. That explains the form of the name;
I thought maybe, he might have some other last name.

The Right Honourable Lord Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton,
first Baron Lytton was who I was thinking of, but I see they're more
similar than I realized.

In any case...

When Dan Quayle got the motto of the United Negro College Fund,

"A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste"

wrong...

"what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being
very wasteful"

at the time, I thought he was getting their motto mixed up with a
paraphrase of Tennyson...

'Tis better to have had a mind and lost it
Than never to have had a mind at all

But I also learned that the UNCF decided to accentuate the positive
by extending its motto...

A mind is a terrible thing to waste,
But a wonderful thing to invest in

is apparently what they're saying now.

And now I could talk about the fate of the AT&SF... oh, no, _that_ one
was from _The Harvey Girls_, and the other one was from a
*different* Judy Garland movie, _Here Come the Waves_. So we are
saved from one digression.

Oh, wait; Judy Garland only _covered_ Accentuate the Positive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTaZ9VyyyhI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qBBc4lgO9I

John Savard

Re: [OT] Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dan Quayle

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Subject: Re: [OT] Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dan Quayle
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by: Charles Packer - Sun, 5 Nov 2023 07:15 UTC

On Sat, 04 Nov 2023 16:19:19 -0700, Quadibloc wrote:

> I just learned that the famous couplet
>
> 'Tis better to have loved and lost,
> Than never to have loved at all
>
> wasn't from somewhere in Shakespeare after all... but was instead from a
> poem which was very famous and popular back in the Victorian era, _In
> Memoriam_, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
>
> Ah, according to Wikipedia, he is the Right Honourable Lord Alfred
> Tennyson, first Baron Tennyson. That explains the form of the name;
> I thought maybe, he might have some other last name.
>
> The Right Honourable Lord Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton,
> first Baron Lytton was who I was thinking of, but I see they're more
> similar than I realized.
>
> In any case...
>
> When Dan Quayle got the motto of the United Negro College Fund,
>
> "A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste"
>
> wrong...
>
> "what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being
> very wasteful"
>

This gaffe has been improved, if such a thing can be conceived,
by being misquoted. In my recollection, Quayle said simply "a mind
is a terrible thing to lose." A search of the newspaper database
confirms that your quote is accurate. But in subsequent references
made to it by assorted speechmakers, the version that I recalled
was propagated widely.

Subject	Author
[OT] Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dan Quayle	Quadibloc
Re: [OT] Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dan Quayle	Charles Packer