This got me curious. I always remembered it as a quote from Dr. Johnson "One must never attempt to teach a pig to sing - it accomplishes nothing and it annoys the pig." ( Johnson, of course, would not have hesitated to paraphrase the Greeks and as his audience was classically educated they would have probably known the reference.) I know Twain paraphrases him later, but in Googling this I was reminded that the more recent paraphrasing is attributed to Lazarus Long - the creation of Heinlein.
I guess good observations just take on a life of their own :-)
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Remember Dr. Johnson's observation about attempting to teach a pig to sing :-) >>Actually, I always thought it was 'teaching it to tell time'...but either way, yes, it's a waste of time and it irritates said Artiodactyla.
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>AFAIR it stems way back from the greeks and involved teaching to sing, but a horse, not a pig. Disclaimer: nor idea how exact time measurement was back then, and if telling time was done singing or not ;-)
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>regards
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>thomas
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
