Questionable Quoting

Those familiar with Shakespeare’s Othello will find this especially amusing.

After being cleared of wrongdoing in a parliamentary enquiry, British politician Jacob Rees-Mogg took to Twitter to express his feelings via a quote from the Bard.

As it happens, he was quoting Iago (from Othello) whose measure of evil is arguably unparalleled across Shakespeare’s works.  Not surprisingly, there were some telling responses such as one person noting that “comparing himself to Iago, best described by Coleridge as an agent of ‘motiveless malignity’, is an unfortunate and rather apt accident.”

Notably, one user on Twitter pulled out a 2012 article in which Mr. Rees-Mogg is quoted as saying:

My favourite book is probably my well-thumbed copy of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. It’s the third edition, which I bought with a school prize I was given in 1985.

It’s a book of endless delight and use. Sometimes, it’s possible to spend an age wandering from one quotation to the next. A fantastic cheat’s guide, it allows a smattering of knowledge to go a long way.