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The meaning and origin of the expression: You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think

You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think

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What's the meaning of the phrase 'You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think'?

Humorous quotation, attributed to Dorothy Parker.

What's the origin of the phrase 'You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think'?

You can lead a horticultureQuotations 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:

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

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.

Gary Martin - the author of the phrases.org.uk website.

By Gary Martin

Gary Martin is a writer and researcher on the origins of phrases and the creator of the Phrase Finder website. Over the past 26 years more than 700 million of his pages have been downloaded by readers. He is one of the most popular and trusted sources of information on phrases and idioms.

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