Monday, April 2, 2018

Have You Read The Forbes Book Of Quotations?



I recently reacquainted myself with the Forbes Book of Quotations, edited by Ted Goodman. I would encourage you to do so too.

The book, broken down into about 250 categories, presents 10,000 thoughts.  I noticed many of the quotes are from writers.  They are quoted on a wide variety of subjects, from ability to zeal.  A few of the entries dealt with topics near and dear to the author or book publicist, including “reading,” “books,” “words,” “writing,” “publicity,” “news” and “grammar.”  But many topics tried to capture key aspects of life -- religion, sex, politics, business, and government.

Cicero, Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dr. Seuss, Thomas Paine, Norman Mailer, Herman Melville, and Voltaire are amongst the thousands of quoted individuals.  You can read this book many ways – by topic or by randomness.  Turn to any page and you are confronted by wisdom of the ages, on matters that touch upon what makes us human and gives us hope – and passion – as well as what angers and frustrates us.  As Francois de la Rochefoucald said:  “Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.”

The mind gets plenty of nourishment when reading this.

Here are some sample quotes that relate to topics that link to the writer and his world of concern:

Reading
“Lists of books we reread and books we can’t finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.”
--Russell Banks

“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
--Edmund Burke

“”Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means?   That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination?  To the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment?  That it enables us to see the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time?  More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.”
--James Russell Lowell

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”
--Richard Steele

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”
--Mark Twain

Publicity
“The two things that people want more than sex or money are recognition and praise.”
--Mary Kay Ash

“All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.”
--Brendan Behan

“To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.”
--T.E. Lawrence

News
“News is the first rough draft of history.”
--Philip I. Graham

Books
“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency – the belief that the here and now is all there is.”
--Allan Bloom

“All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.”
--Thomas Carlyle

“Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.”
--Humphrey Carpenter

“To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.”
--Cicero

“It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.”
--Victor Hugo

“I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they do not understand.”
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.”
--Evelyn Waugh

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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2018. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource."

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