"Flog A Dead Horse"
The first recorded use of the expression with its modern meaning is by John Bright, referring to the Reform Bill of 1867, which called for more democratic representation in Parliament, an issue about which Parliament was singularly apathetic. The Oxford English Dictionary cites The Globe, 1872, as the earliest verifiable use of flogging a dead horse, where someone is said to have "rehearsed that... lively operation known as flogging a dead horse".
Read more about this topic: John Bright
Famous quotes containing the words flog, dead and/or horse:
“You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15:51-53.
“Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger than a calf-skin: shuts the eyes so that we cannot see the horse that is running away with us; worse, shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)