A famous saying about things in heaven and earth is a misattributed Hamlet paraphrase.

Evidence

The clear delineation between scientifically verifiable truths and unambiguous falsehoods is occasionally met with opposition from adherents of postmodernist theories of science dating back to the 1960s, who deny the existence of a reality altogether. … The sentence rendered in this way is often attributed to Shakespeare, occasionally also to the legendary Chinese philosopher Laozi . In fact, this sentence is questionably rephrased from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 779

Categorization

• CANDY: The bit that a misquoted line parallels calling ‘He can lick my ass’ a Goethe quote is a fun, tweetable trivia nugget.