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John Bartlett - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature
pambo's Full Review: John Bartlett - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: A ...
The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on. But not if the right phrase, the right word can’t be found.
Writers often experience the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident. But sometimes they don’t, not if the words won't come, and that’s where Bartlett’s comes in. Where would writers be without Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations? Perhaps all is not lost if the right word or expression isn’t found. But, lots of us would be stuck, trying to remember just precisely how that phrase that is rattling around in their heads really goes.
Readers and writers alike know we can draw every day upon an an extensive body of literature that feeds our writing, speech and thought. Phrases and expressions we never think about are rooted in the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Jefferson, Paul Simon, the Beatles, and many more across thousands of years of literature and historical writing.
First published in 1855,Bartlett’s has specialized in collecting, verifying and supplying thousands of quotations to those in need of just the right word, the curious, the lovers of language. In this book, you’ll find just about every meaningful phrase you ever heard in a literature class, history, or from the Bible or even from your parents’ lips. And far more you’ve never heard but ought to know. While the book is periodically updated, the editors try to include more current phrases without toppling over to advertising pitches that have come to infect our daily speech. Thus, you’ll find “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee” and “Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out,” but not “I love what you do for me!”
The book is sorted into two general areas. The central part of the book collects under specific names or sources, such as Mark Twain, various books of the Bible, Homer, Chaucer, Pope John Paul II, which make up the bulk of its more than 1,500 pages. Then there's the index. Ordinarily, I wouldn't count the index as a section, but in this case, it's where many people first turn when they're trying capture the source of a phrase.
If you’re not looking for a specific phrase but want to just get a sense of wonderful writers and their thoughts, then just flip through these pages. The origins of some are surprisingly old or just surprising. Some people who haven’t, ahem, read a Bible or other religious text in a long time may be surprised to fight the source of some everyday expressions to be surprising.
One caution: if you’re one of those people who can get lost in words while thumbing through a dictionary, don’t pick this up. Or else you may be like the Prodigal Son: He once was lost and now is found. At least in my case, this can be an hour or so after I went to look up just one little phrase.
You should buy this book if you love language. It’s that simple. These words are our inheritance. After all, words have a longer life than deeds.
Sources of quotes in bold above, all of which are cited in Bartlett's:
GIBRAN
H.L. MENCKEN
MILTON
MUHAMMAD ALI
TIMOTHY LEARY
GOSPEL OF LUKE
PINDAR
The title of this article came from the epitaph of Alcuin (735-804)
First published in 1855, this edition has been completely updated and revised with quotations from the ancient Egyptians to the latest movie, from the...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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