When I first saw this Father's Day card, I was immediately suspicious of the quote. However, it turns out I was completely wrong. Shows what I know. Yes, this is a quote from Milne's "The House at Pooh Corner" (1928), albeit with some liberties taken. The full quote (from Chapter 6) being: "Christopher Robin came down from the Forest to the bridge, feeling all sunny and careless, and just as if twice nineteen didn't matter a bit, as it didn't on such a happy afternoon, and he thought that if he stood on the bottom rail of the bridge, and leant over, and watched the river slipping slowly away beneath him, then he would suddenly know everything that there was to be known, and he would be able to tell Pooh, who wasn't quite sure about some of it." Beautiful.
Pinterest is a treasure trove of Pooh misquotes. Some, like this one, seem to involve intentional acts of vandalism. Whoever wrote this Pooh misquote went out of their way to retool a perfectly well loved children's book by a different author - "Hope for the flowers" by Trina Paulus - in order to make this Pooh and Piglet mashup. The revised version replaces two caterpillars talking earnestly about become butterflies (which makes sense) with Pooh and Piglet talking earnestly about become butterflies (which makes no sense). And here: the nervous, anxious, permanently frightened Piglet is the one reassuring Pooh not to worry about the death and destruction of his physical body because his intangible spirit will somehow continue on. Not even in character! To touch things off, the vandal has used a mock-ink font, yellowed paper, and faked an A. A. Milne signature at the bottom to lend credibility to the offending article.
Goodreads is a website where people can share book recommendations and information. (The largest website of its kind in the world according to the website owners.) One feature of this particular website is a section where quotes from particular books are listed. So naturally I wanted to audit the accuracy of Pooh quotes specifically attributed to the 1926 edition of the original "Winnie-the-Pooh" by A. A. Milne. Once I removed duplicates and quotations from non-English translations, I was left with 64 quotes for evaluation. Of these 64 quotes only 52% (i.e. 33 quotes) were actual direct quotes from "Winnie-the-Pooh" (Milne, 1926). Another 3% (i.e. two quotes) I'll give partial credit for - recognizable as quotes from this book but where people had taken some liberties with the exact wording. Of the remaining 45% not from "Winnie-the-Pooh", 11 were from "House at Pooh Corner", (which, I feel obliged to add, is a different book, and even then seven of these 11 quotes had significant liberties taken with the exact wording), two were from the Disney movie "Pooh's Grand Adventure" (1997), two were from the movie "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" (1977), leaving a grand 14 quotes (just over one fifth of all those listed) that were not from any Milne publication nor Disney movie. No wonder people get confused.
Correct! (...at least the second part.) From the beginning of Chapter 6 in "The House at Pooh Corner" (1928) the full quote is: By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.
A game of Poohsticks ensues. |
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