”Satisfaction brought it back.”
Everyone knows that, despite its supposed nine lives, curiosity killed the cat. Well, not quite. The 'killed the cat' proverb originated as 'care killed the cat'. By 'care' the coiner of the expression meant 'worry/sorrow' rather than our more usual contemporary 'look after/provide for' meaning.
That form of the expression is first recorded in the English playwright Ben Jonson's play Every Man in His Humour, 1598:
"Helter skelter, hang sorrow, care'll kill a Cat, up-tails all, and a Louse for the Hangman.”
The play was one of the Tudor humours comedies, in which each major character is assigned a particular 'humour' or trait. The play is thought to have been performed in 1598 by The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a troupe of actors including William Shakespeare and William Kempe. Shakespeare was no slouch when it came to appropriating a memorable line and it crops up the following year in Much Ado About Nothing:
"What, courage man! what though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care."
Whether it’s a Facebook status or a bumper sticker, everyone loves a great quote. However, some of the most famous quotes in history, from Gandhi to Mark Twain, aren’t what you think they are. Gandhi didn’t tell you to “be the change” and Twain didn’t only believe in “death and taxes.”
Sometimes quotes take on new lives after their authors’ deaths, changing from the original phrasing. Or they find out they said something that they never said at all, which happened to George Carlin all the time.
Here are 31 of the most famous misquotes in history, from the slightly altered to the completely changed. In life, it turns out that there’s no phrase so great that you can’t totally butcher it.