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Who really said it

Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away

Not Chauncey Depew — first credited to animator Paul Terry Paul Terry 1887–1971 · American animator, founder of Terrytoons
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Chauncey Depew died on 5 April 1928. The joke’s earliest documented printing is a New York gossip column of 13 June 1937, which gives the line to Terrytoons animator Paul Terry and mentions Depew only as a byword for hating exercise — not as its author. Depew was credited directly for the first time seven months later, in a newspaper filler of 17 January 1938, nearly ten years after his death.

Last verified 8 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away” earliest documented printing: Lucius Beebe's column "New York Speaking," Cleveland Plain Dealer, 13 June 1937, where it is credited to animator Paul Terry. Not Chauncey Depew: he died on 5 April 1928, and the joke was first pinned on him in January 1938, nearly ten years posthumously. Source trail: Quote Investigator. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “When I feel like exercising, I just lie down until the feeling goes away.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Chauncey Depew. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

The earliest documented printing (13 June 1937) is a columnist’s report of someone else’s remark rather than an authored text, and it falls well after the pre-1931 cutoff for automatic US public domain — so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above, don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Paul Terry — American animator, founder of Terrytoons. Theme: "Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The column that got there first

Earliest documented printing
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Column & date
“New York Speaking” by Lucius Beebe, 13 June 1937, page 12-C
Credited there to
Paul Terry, founder of the Terrytoons animation studio
First credit to Depew
Circleville Herald (Ohio), 17 January 1938 — nearly ten years after his death

GOTHAM GOINGS ON: Paul Terry, who does the animated cartoons, shares Chauncey M. Depew’s contempt for exercise … “When I feel like exercising,” he says, “I just lie down until the feeling goes away.”

The ellipsis is in the original. Note what Depew is doing in this sentence: he is the benchmark for hating exercise, and the line itself belongs to Terry. Quoted from the transcription in Quote Investigator ↗, which cites the page image via GenealogyBank.

Quote Investigator: Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away

How we know

  • The earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator is a syndicated New York gossip column printed on 13 June 1937, which gives the remark to animator Paul Terry and names Depew only as a fellow despiser of exercise (Quote Investigator ↗). Reader’s Digest credited Terry again in January 1938, and the Yale Book of Quotations files the line under his name.
  • Chauncey Depew died on 5 April 1928 at the age of ninety-three (Wikipedia ↗), so the first item to put the words in his mouth — an untitled filler in Ohio’s Circleville Herald on 17 January 1938 — is posthumous by nearly a decade.
  • Mark Twain, the other name this joke is pinned on, is tied to it no earlier than an October 1937 speech at Williams College — the earliest Twain connection Quote Investigator located, long after his death in 1910 — and the joke has not been found anywhere in his work. His documented view of exercise, from his seventieth-birthday dinner speech, runs: “Exercise is loathsome” (Project Gutenberg ↗).
  • Quote Investigator’s verdict is that the preponderance of evidence favours Paul Terry, with Edna May Oliver and Jimmy Durante as rival contenders — and it notes one unchecked lead, a 1936 doctoral thesis that may contain the Durante version and would then be earlier (Quote Investigator ↗).

No public-domain claim can honestly be made for this wording. The version people quote matches no single sourced original — it is a floating newspaper gag, and even its earliest documented printing, on 13 June 1937, is a columnist’s report of someone else’s remark rather than an authored text. That date falls well after the pre-1931 cutoff for automatic US public domain, and the line has never been traced to anything Chauncey Depew published, so the status of the exact wording is undetermined.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Everyone who has been handed this line

This is one of the most promiscuously attributed jokes in English. Within roughly fifteen years of its first printing it had been given to an animator, an actress, a comedian, a university president, a humorist, a parodist, a dead senator and a dead novelist — and the modern internet mostly settled on the two dead men.

Chauncey Depew Posthumous

Depew died on 5 April 1928 (Wikipedia ↗). The first printing to assign him the words directly is an untitled filler in the Circleville Herald of Ohio on 17 January 1938 — “Chauncey M. Depew… said of exercise, ‘Whenever I feel like it, I just lie down until the feeling goes away’” — seven months after the column that credited Paul Terry (Quote Investigator ↗).

Mark Twain Late ascription

The earliest Twain connection Quote Investigator found is a speech at the induction of the new president of Williams College on 8 October 1937 — twenty-seven years after Twain’s death in 1910 — and the joke has not been found anywhere in his work. What Twain did say about exercise, at his seventieth-birthday dinner in 1905, was blunter and quite different: “Exercise is loathsome” (Project Gutenberg ↗).

Robert Maynard Hutchins Anonymous "hero"

In December 1938 the writer J. P. McEvoy profiled the young University of Chicago president in The American Mercury and said Hutchins “holds with that hero who confessed” the exercise joke — crediting an unnamed third party. After that piece the words were regularly ascribed to Hutchins himself, and sometimes to McEvoy (Quote Investigator ↗).

Robert Benchley and Max Beerbohm 1950s

A 1950 shaving-products advertisement in Life credited “the late Bob Benchley”; a 1952 item in the Lethbridge Herald gave it to Max Beerbohm. Neither claim carries any earlier evidence (Quote Investigator ↗).

The earliest documented owner of the joke is the animator Paul Terry, in Lucius Beebe’s column of 13 June 1937 — with the actress Edna May Oliver credited two weeks later and Jimmy Durante a year after that, and with Depew appearing in that very first printing only as the standard reference for a man who despised exercise (Quote Investigator ↗).

Context

Why the joke landed on Depew

Chauncey Depew is exactly the kind of name jokes migrate to. He ran the New York Central Railroad, sat in the US Senate for twelve years, was one of the most sought-after after-dinner speakers in America, and then did the single most useful thing a wit can do for his posthumous reputation: he lived to ninety-three. Any gag about staying healthy by doing nothing had an obvious peg to hang on.

The first known printing shows the mechanism happening in slow motion. In June 1937 the columnist Lucius Beebe wrote that the animator Paul Terry “shares Chauncey M. Depew’s contempt for exercise” — Depew is the yardstick, Terry is the speaker. Seven months later a filler item had dropped the yardstick and handed Depew the line itself. He had been dead since 1928.

In the first printing, Depew is the comparison — not the speaker.

Two loose ends worth knowing about

Quote Investigator flags one unresolved thread: a 1938 philosophy book by John R. Reid quotes the gag as a current Jimmy Durante routine, and that book was a revision of a 1936 Berkeley PhD thesis. If the Durante line was already in the thesis, it would predate the 1937 column — but QI has not seen the thesis, so the 1937 printing stands as the earliest confirmed one.

Depew attracted the other famous exercise joke the same way. Quote Investigator’s separate study of “I get my exercise acting as a pallbearer to my friends who exercise” finds the earliest evidence pointing to the newspaperman William Allen White by 1925, with Depew credited in 1930 — again, after his death — and Mark Twain only in 1950.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Work Simplicity

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: “Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away”quoteinvestigator.com

The definitive study: dated citations from 1937 to 1952, every claimant from Paul Terry to Max Beerbohm, and the conclusion that Terry is the leading candidate.
Quote Investigator: “I Take My Only Exercise Acting as a Pallbearer…”quoteinvestigator.com

The companion case: the other great exercise joke, credited to Depew in 1930 — two years after his death — with William Allen White as the earliest evidence.
Chauncey Depew — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (23 April 1834 – 5 April 1928), his New York Central and US Senate careers, and his reputation as an orator and after-dinner wit.
Paul Terry (cartoonist) — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the man the 1937 column actually credits: Terrytoons founder, 1,300-plus cartoons, creator of the studio behind Mighty Mouse.
Mark Twain’s Speeches — Project Gutenbergwww.gutenberg.org

Twain’s actual seventieth-birthday remarks on exercise — “Exercise is loathsome” — which are not this joke, and which help explain why the joke drifted to him.
Edna May Oliver — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

The stage and film actress credited with a version of the line two weeks after Paul Terry, in a New York column of 28 June 1937.

The likeliest originator

Who actually gets the credit

Paul Terry

1887–1971 · American animator, founder of Terrytoons

Paul Houlton Terry was an American cartoonist, animator, screenwriter, director and producer who turned out over 1,300 cartoons between 1915 and 1955, and whose Terrytoons studio gave the world Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle and Gandy Goose. He was famously unsentimental about his own trade — “Walt Disney is the Tiffany’s of the business, and I am the Woolworth’s” — and it is his name, not Depew’s, that sits on the first known printing of the exercise joke in June 1937. Quote Investigator calls him the leading candidate rather than a certainty: the actress Edna May Oliver and the comedian Jimmy Durante were both credited within a year, and the trail may yet run earlier.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

Lucius Beebe, “New York Speaking,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 13, 1937, 12-C — earliest documented printing located by Quote Investigator, where the remark is credited to animator Paul Terry. See Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away,” June 9, 2012.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Whenever I Feel the Urge to Exercise I Lie Down Until It Goes Away’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/whenever-i-feel-the-urge-to-exercise-i-lie-down-until-it/

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