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You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her thinkMeaningHumourous quotation, attributed to Dorothy Parker. Origin
She coined 'lead a horticulture...' after challenged by the American columnist and wit Franklin P Adams to use the word 'horticulture' in a sentence. Obviously it's a play on words on the familiar you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink and is spoken as you can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think. Phrasefinder is also on
Tudor Phrases and Sayings - a book on the meanings and origins of the phrases and sayings that Shakespeare and Henry VIII used that we use still use every day. |
Quotations of this sort are often difficult to verify and this one has been attributed to Mae West (with little or no justification) and others. In this case, various contemporaries have verified the authorship as Parker's. She coined many witticisms and had occasion to complain that the recognition usually went elsewhere, as in A Pig's-Eye View of Literature, 1937:
