‘Words for the Wise’ originated in a book of quotations, trivia and random historical information I put together when my daughter started her freshman year at Boston University. More recently, I removed everything except the quotations, added lots more and decided to try to publish this book as the perfect gift for the young person in your life who is just finishing high school or already in college or university.

Online searching now means that almost anyone can quickly get hold of any fact she or he might need in a fraction of the time it would take to look it up in a printed book.

So why produce a book of quotes?

The problem with finding the right quote to illustrate or enliven a point in an essay or term paper, is that either you need to be vaguely aware of the specific quotation in question and so only need to check the exact wording or attribution; or you have to wade through dozens of suggestions from your search engine of choice.

So this collection is intended to be a filtered list of quotes, short enough to be skimmed in advance, so you can be sufficiently familiar with the content to know that, yes, there is a suitable phrase or longer extract that could be used in this particular situation.

Beyond this, between the covers of the book, there is a treasury of wit and wisdom to be enjoyed and, just occasionally, to be reflected upon.

Apart from the usual suspects – Shakespeare, Dr, Johnson, the Bible, JFK and the like; the book also contains contributions from Chelsea Handler, Caitlin Moran, Dave Barry, Donald Westlake and Woody Allen.

‘The nicest thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator, which is often socially impressive.’
Kenneth Williams

‘Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
The words erroneously repeated.’
Ambrose Bierce

‘Words for the Wise’ is available as in paperback from your local Amazon website.