Posted by Masakim on December 13, 2002
In Reply to: Re: Work is the curse of the drinking classes posted by R. Berg on December 13, 2002
: : Purely for my own curiosity this one - anyone know the origin (Oscar Wilde?) presumably a corruption of something much more worthy..
: : Pat.
: More recent than Wilde.
: "work is the curse of the drinking classes." A catchphrase pun on the cliché (untrue since WW2 and grossly exaggerated since WW1), 'drink is the curse of the working classes': since the late or, at earliest, the middle 1940s [Eric Partridge, "A Dictionary of Catch Phrases American and British," 1977].
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
H. Pearson _Life of Oscar Wilde_ ch. 12
From _The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Fifth Edition_