Having observed that the ’bakery has a little used Literature section, I decided to fill it up a bit with some literary inventions I have named Cracked Quotes. [I spent a couple of hours searching for a site for similar literary jokes and found none]. [Correct me!] Here’s the first batch. Warning : I have hundreds more.

“Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker”, wrote OGDEN NASH. But when I tried liquor it made me much sicker ... woops - I must dash.

”None but the brave deserve the fair”, wrote DRYDEN, with commonsense at zero, for a woman would rather spend time with an interesting coward than with a boring hero.

“Use your frog as if you loved him”, wrote ISAAK WALTON. [Sometimes I wish he’d come back as a frog or a fish, or be eaten by eels, to know how it feels.]

Wrote RUPERT BROOKE “And is there honey still for tea?” [Sorry, no. Too many calories in it for me.]

A nightingale’s got a “fiery heart” claimed WORDSWORTH. [Cheap writing sir. Pay more attention to the bird’s worth.]

JOHN DRINKWATER “washed wondrous apples with moonlight”. [Check for white coats when doing this late at night.]

“A little of what you fancy does you good”, said MARIE LLOYD, putting it more succinctly than Sigmund Freud.

MACBETH “threw his physic to the dogs” and got into fights with Animals’ Rights.

Here endeth the first instalment. [Shouts of NO MORE NO MORE are heard from all parts of the galaxy.]
-- rayfo, Dec 02 2000

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me ..." http://users.castel...wers/A-Lobotomy.htm
Context for BigThor's Tom Waits quote. Waits spoke the words, but who first came up with that line is unclear. [jutta, Dec 02 2000]

The Clerihew http://www.thinks.com/words/clerihew.htm
What this form's properly called, and its origins [Cnidarae, Dec 02 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]

You're really at a loose end today, aren't you?
-- DrBob, Dec 02 2000


'...threw his physic to the dogs' and ended up up to his ankles in post consumer canine food.
-- StarChaser, Dec 02 2000


Tom Waits once said: "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy", Which is, in itself, a wondrous dichotomy, So while I'm waiting for others to get the gist, I'll take his advice and go out and get pissed.

(Loose end? This is the best I could do on 36 hours without sleep!)
-- BigThor, Dec 06 2000


so sorry, it's already been invented: the Clerihew. See link. Good examples, though, I must say. (I mean, I realize there's nothing in the Clerihew that *specifically* demands quotes from the person you're epigramming, but I really think it's close enough to be a blood-brother, at _least_.)
-- Cnidarae, Apr 13 2001


A clerihew is “an irreverent, unscanned, rhyming quatrain upon a fanciful biographical theme, always beginning with the name of its subject”. [W. R. Espy in “The Game of Words” 1972}

My cracked quotes are “an irreverent scanned rhyming quatrain embodying an exact quote from a named famous writer, fancifully treated” [my words] - different enough I suggest, for cracked quotes to stand alone as a novel "fixed form".
-- rayfo, May 13 2001


HORRACE GREELY "Go West, young man" and when the tech bust hits California, move on to Japan. -- (Is there a city in India that rhymes with "man"?)
-- booleanfool, Apr 17 2004



random, halfbakery