Sarah in Fleming Island, Florida, is curious about the saying sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you, which suggests “it’s a dog-eat-dog world,” or “eat or be eaten,” or more gently, “you win some, you lose some.” Garson O’Toole, who digs into the provenance of quotations at Quote Investigator has traced versions of this saying back to an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1870 essay, “Farming.” Since prehistoric times, the bear has been regarded as a fearsome predator, and today the term bear is often applied to anything that presents enormous difficulty. Another version of this saying is sometimes you hunt the bear, sometimes the bear hunts you. This is part of a complete episode.
What makes a great first line of a book? How do the best authors put together an initial sentence that draws you in and makes you want to read more? We’re talking about the openings of such novels as George Orwell’s 1984...
To slip someone a mickey means to doctor a drink and give it to an unwitting recipient. The phrase goes back to Mickey Finn of the Lone Star Saloon in Chicago, who in the late 19th century was notorious for drugging certain customers and relieving...
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