Quotes for all seasons

"IT is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations," the young Winston Churchill used to say, dreaming perhaps of the day when his own lines would fill out their columns. The volume on which he was weaned was Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, dating from 1855. But successive compilers have made up, amended or reversed the rules of admission to books of quotations, ending up with an entertaining blend of reference tool, book and self-educator. So it would seem with Robert Andrews (Ed.) The New Penguin Book of Modern Quotations, that would serve at least two purposes. The first, to be a work of reference; to tell us, should we want to know, that the person who said, "We're up to our necks in shit, it's true, and that's why we walk with our heads held high," was the Italian playwright and Nobel Laureate, Dario Fo in "Accidental Death of an Anarchist". The second is to entertain: to tempt the reader to dip into the book at random, by unearthing interesting and obscurely derived phrases, like:

"What ho!," I said.

"What ho!," said Motty.

"What ho!, What ho!"

"What ho!, What ho!,What ho!,"

After that it became difficult to go on with the conversation.

(P.G. Wodehouse in My Man Jeeves)

But first, the scope of the book. It consists of some 8000 of the pithiest and most telling quotations since 1914 - the book's point of departure - that have been taken from comedians and politicians via literature, film scripts, song lyrics, journalism, even occasional pieces of advertising slogans and graffiti. Many of these quotes have become part of our consciousness; some others are obscure, or at least have not appeared frequently in print. But what they have in common is the power to entertain or intrigue or shock; or simply, as the Marxist scholar Walter Benjamin said, "to be like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his convictions." Or simply to tell the truth so that we can no longer evade it: "An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. (Mahatma Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, Vol. 2. 1949). "For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be defined thus; the meaning of a word is its use in language." (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations).

A little on the specifics of the editorial layout. First, the biographies of the speakers or writers have been supplied in addition to relevant details regarding the quotations themselves, enabling a more complete understanding and importance of each entry. Second, although authors are listed alphabetically, the order of quotations under each entry is chronological, "a scheme," as the editor says, "that allows insight into their author's lives and the evolution of their philosophies and convictions. The entries of Salman Rushdie, for example, reveal how much of his writing has been a commentary on the theme of belief and how the infamous fatwa - was not just a personal blow but also a poignant and bitterly ironic one in the context of his other major preoccupation: the interplay between literature, faith and society. More importantly, it is very well-referenced: the end papers provide a list of themes, a thematic index and keyword index that would help you to track down any idea you are looking for or who said what to whom and when. The book is full of relevant quotes on many subjects and your time would be very well spent reading them.

RAVI VYAS

The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Robert Andrews (Ed.), Penguin Books, Special Indian Price £11.99.

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A sampler

Some men are heterosexual, some men are homosexual, and some men don't think of sex at all. They become lawyers,

Woody Allen, 1968-75

No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modelled, built or invented except to literally to get out of hell.

Antonin Artaud, in Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society, 1947

Whereas England may have been doomed to civilise the world, no power under heaven can civilise England.

James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work, 1976

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer er books. Books make sense of life. The problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.

Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot, 1984

Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.

Roland Barthes, French semiologist, 1975

The things that come into being change continuously. The man with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing.

Augosto Bastos, Paraguayan novelist in I, the Supreme, 1974

I couldn't have done it otherwise. Gone on, I mean. I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.'

Samuel Beckett, Indifferent Interviews, 1978

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, 1928

The first step towards building an alternative world has to be a refusal of the world-picture implanted in our minds and all the false promises used everywhere to justify and idealise the delinquent and insatiable need to sell. Another space is vitally necessary.

John Berger, Against the Great Defeat of the World, 1999

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

Jorge Borges, Labyrinths, 1962

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