steepholm: (tree_face)
[personal profile] steepholm
I've occasionally posted dubious quotations here before. This one may be entirely genuine, but I don't recognise it, and to me it feels considerably too saccharine.

So, all across the internet you will find the following attributed to A. A. Milne: “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

Is that for real? I could check by rereading the books, but if any of you recognise the quotation from either of them, I'd be pleased to know.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nineweaving.livejournal.com
Not only sickly-saccharine, but not Milne's cadences (at least to my ear). It's not in Winnie-the-Pooh, of which I happen to have an eBook. Has anyone got The House at Pooh Corner?

Nine

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shark-hat.livejournal.com
And Gratitude sounds like the wrong register, as well- Milne miiiight have had Piglet using Thanks in that sort of context, maybe? (Do any of the characters actually think of themselves as small? I don't remember it but haven't read them for a while.)

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Agreed about 'gratitude'. I suppose it's possible the sentence crops up in some Disney film, but to attribute it to Milne reeks of wrongness.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-31 10:49 pm (UTC)
joyeuce: (lucy)
From: [personal profile] joyeuce
I think Piglet refers to himself as a Small (or possibly Very Small) Animal at some point.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shark-hat.livejournal.com
On a "Search Inside" at amazon, the word "gratitude" appears in neither book; "heart" appears in Winnie-the-Pooh, but in the context of Pooh learning a hum by heart. So yeah, it's rubbish.
(I think Pooh's Very Little Brain is the only bodily metaphor used about any of the characters, but haven't read them recently.)

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Thank you for confirming that. It niggled; and now it annoys.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nineweaving.livejournal.com
"Brain" appears 13 times in The House at Pooh Corner, and heart (as noted) not at all.

Nine

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Thank you. I'm glad to have had my natural scepticism and distrust vindicated.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:39 pm (UTC)
sovay: (Psholtii: in a bad mood)
From: [personal profile] sovay
So, all across the internet you will find the following attributed to A. A. Milne: “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

Aaagh.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:49 pm (UTC)
sovay: (I Claudius)
From: [personal profile] sovay
Do you have any idea where, as a misquotation, it originated? I threw it into Google Books and got a lot of really sticky-looking inspirational nonfiction.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 10:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
I don't know. Once in circulation, these things tend to misbeget each other...

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-29 11:03 pm (UTC)
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
From: [personal profile] sovay
Once in circulation, these things tend to misbeget each other...

I was just in the process of putting together an edit to my comment: it looks like there's more of them. The exchange with Piglet about breakfast is real. Two others—the corner of the Forest and "What about lunch?"—are rearrangements of lines from The House at Pooh Corner. It is true that I haven't checked all of the rest, but I am very, very skeptical about the remainder of the Milne quotations on that page.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 12:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
I made the mistake of looking at those. Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 12:42 am (UTC)
sovay: (Psholtii: in a bad mood)
From: [personal profile] sovay
Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

I'm trying to figure out where these things come from! Do people just confuse The Tao of Pooh with verbatim Milne?

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 05:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
It's strange, isn't it? That blog in particular is written by someone who professes a profound love of the books, and writes as if she knows them well, yet she comes out with all that tosh! And none of her equally enthusiastic commenters picks her up on it (unless they're just sparing her feelings).

I haven't read The Tao of Pooh, but I hope it's better than that.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 05:26 am (UTC)
sovay: (Morell: quizzical)
From: [personal profile] sovay
That blog in particular is written by someone who professes a profound love of the books, and writes as if she knows them well, yet she comes out with all that tosh!

I know! It's one of the reasons I'm trying to figure out what she's so lovingly cited, because it isn't for the most part the actual books!

I haven't read The Tao of Pooh, but I hope it's better than that.

That's fair. It had an inspirational sound and I am slightly biased against Benjamin Hoff for his work on the edition of Opal Whiteley that blew [livejournal.com profile] rushthatspeaks' mind in 2011.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 05:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
My gaze is fixed on Disney. Some of those quotations have just Disney's timbre and hokiness-quotient. Here's one of them, in fact, turning up in a Disney cartoon.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 05:43 am (UTC)
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
From: [personal profile] sovay
Here's one of them, in fact, turning up in a Disney cartoon.

Yes, that makes sense. I've never seen any of the cartoons myself.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 12:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
Yes, I can hear the Disney narrator in my head saying that; it sounds like Disney.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 07:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ethelmay.livejournal.com
This is why Disney Pooh has never had any place in my house. I am always tempted to spell it without the H. (Disney Poo, I mean, not 'ouse.) And I don't dare think what they must have made of Eeyore.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 01:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
I've read those books to shreds and have a very good textual memory. That line is nowhere in them. Guaranteed.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 05:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
That's good to know, though it's annoying that Milne's name is being taken in vain in "inspirational" quotes on the internet. Mind you, he wouldn't be the first person to suffer that fate.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 12:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
It's annoying, because people forget how witty and...sarcastic isn't the right word, but...maybe...deadpan Milne actually is. Have you ever read any of his non-Pooh stuff?

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 02:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Only Toad of Toad Hall, which probably doesn't count.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 07:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ethelmay.livejournal.com
Once on a Time is quite fun.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-30 08:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Thanks, I'll check it out.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-31 02:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
I agree, but my favorite non-Pooh Milne is a short essay he wrote about pretending to be a bird-watching expert at a weekend at somebody's summer home. "The mating season is different, and, of course, the eggs are more speckled," he says, covers most situations.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-31 02:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
And here's a link to it! With the link to subsequent pages, of course: http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/12079/5.html#gsc.tab=0

(no subject)

Date: 2016-05-31 06:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
That's lovely! A bit like Stephen Potter's Lifemanship, avant la lettre.
Edited Date: 2016-05-31 06:05 am (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2016-06-01 08:55 am (UTC)
ewein2412: (harriet crabby)
From: [personal profile] ewein2412
I have been very annoyed in the past to find Teh Internets spreading a quotation from A LITTLE PRINCESS, an exchange between Sara and her father, attributed to Pooh and Christopher Robin. Milne seems to attract misquotation.

(no subject)

Date: 2016-06-01 09:35 am (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2016-06-01 03:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
That's not...I mean...how could anybody who has read Milne mistake A Little Princess for him?

(no subject)

Date: 2016-06-01 04:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ethelmay.livejournal.com
More hearts, right? "You are inside my heart."

(no subject)

Date: 2016-06-01 04:42 pm (UTC)
ewein2412: (harriet writing (no text))
From: [personal profile] ewein2412
yup, that's the one!

Profile

steepholm: (Default)
steepholm

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  12345
67891011 12
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags