The other day I wrote: “As Mark Twain once said, ‘I’ve never wished a man dead, but I’ve read some obituaries with great pleasure.'”
That was a misquote. It was Clarence Darrow, who said, “I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
I wasn’t the only one who, caught up in the frenzy of writing about the breaking news (and at 3:00 A.M.), pulled the fragment of the quote from the memory, but I should have trusted my instincts and ran the quote to its source.
HT to CLW.