Sunday, 15 August 2010

The Most Quoted Lines of Poetry: Now With Added Graphs!

This post originally went up back in February, but it deserves another outing because the Antipodean has very kindly gone through and added some explanatory graphs, which are now attached at the bottom.



Counting down from number fifty...

49. Full fathom five thy father lies 438,000 Shakespeare
42. They also serve who only stand and wait 584,000 Milton
41. The quality of mercy is not strained 589,000 Shakespeare
40. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 594,000 Coleridge
38. Shall I compare thee to a summers day 638,000 Shakespeare
37. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness 641,000 Keats
36. A thing of beauty is a joy forever 649,000 Keats
34. Busy old fool, unruly sun 675,000 John Donne
31. O Romeo, Romeo; wherefore art thou Romeo 912,000Shakespeare
30. The lady doth protest too much, methinks 929,000Shakespeare
25. Hope springs eternal in the human breast 1,080,000 Alexander Pope
24. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes 1,100,000Shakespeare
21. A narrow fellow in the grass 1,310,000 Emily Dickinson
18. In Flanders fields the poppies blow 1,640,000 John McCrae
17. The proper study of mankind is man 1,770,000 Alexander Pope
16. A little learning is a dangerous thing 1,860,000 Alexander Pope
15. But at my back I always hear 2,010,000 Marvell
13. My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun 2,230,000Shakespeare
12. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold 2,330,000W.B.Yeats
5. And miles to go before I sleep 5,350,000 Robert Frost
4. I wandered lonely as a cloud 8,000,000 Wordsworth
3. The child is father of the man 9,420,000 Wordsworth



Our rules were that:
1) it had to be a 
whole line of poetry (minimum 8 syllables) that
6) No more than one line per medium sized poem.


  1. There once was a man from Nantucket: 123 000

  2. The Antipodean, who heard someone talking about 'untangling a web of deceit' on the radio this morning,16 August 2010 at 05:49

    "Oh! what a tangled web we weave" gets 289,000, but the full quote only gets 19,400.

    That quote also gets misattributed to Shakespeare and various other people. Shakespeare would certainly well and truly top any graph of 'given credit for other people's lines,' although since he has 11 of the top 50, they're pretty good odds if you need to guess.

  3. The graphs say "Frequency in 000's". Please correct this.

  4. Fascinating! Do you ever look up what search terms have brought people to Inkyfool, by the way?
    p.s. Gordon Campbell's right - did you factor in the man from Nantucket... just out of interest?

  5. Yes. My absolute favourite was the chap who came here after searching for "inky sex". I haven't been able to look at a fountain pen the same way since.

  6. Two people found me by searching for 'zombie womble' - the words were in separate posts, but there's definitely some mileage in that!