24 October 2005

A lot of information...

...is not necessarily a good thing.

On Saturday night, Doug and I went out for dinner. We actually went to McHales, on the corner of 46th & 8th, for a burger, since they have -- in my opinion -- the best burgers in New York City, and that venerable institution is supposedly closing its doors at the end of the year; to make way for, of all hateful things, luxury housing... just what New York needs more of.

Anyway, deep into our cups, Doug paraphrased an old saying: "It's not enough that I succeed. My friends must also fail." We shared a good laugh over this, and Doug admitted that he didn't know the author of the original line, but suspected -- or had heard -- it was Oscar Wilde.

So when I got home, I Googled the line, and got an answer other than I expected. I couldn't find a definitive attribution for the quote, but got hit after hit of web pages in which and endless stream of authors were credited.

Here are the folks most credited with this bon mot. See if you know any of them:





Any clue? I'll post the answers later. In the meantime, if anyone out there knows the original author of the quote, I'd sure love to know who it is.



By the way: This just makes me giggle.

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