The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Oxford Quick Reference) - Softcover

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9780192800459: The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Oxford Quick Reference)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192800450 ISBN 13: 9780192800459

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996

Mark Twain once noted that Adam had a unique advantage--"When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before." But once our primordial ancestors began quoting one another--perhaps to show off their keen humor and erudition--the habit became part of what makes us human. And though we often quote sage advice and learned homilies, by far our favorite quote is the one that makes us, and our audience, laugh.
Now, in The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations , noted writer and satirist Ned Sherrin has gathered nearly 5,000 quotations in a rollicking collection drawn from an international cast of humorists and pundits, ranging from Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Oscar Wilde to Groucho Marx, Monty Python, and Roseanne. Arranged in themes, from Actors and Acting (including Dorothy Parker's famous barb on Katherine Hepburn's Broadway debut, "She ran the whole gamut of the emotions from A to B") to Parents (P. J. O'Rourke, "Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly"), to Youth (Georges Courteline, "It's better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all"), Sherrin has left no turn unstoned to collect the sharpest, the wittiest, the wryest in quips, put-downs, and one-liners.
Here is Senator Wyche Fowler's come-back when asked if he had smoked marijuana in the permissive sixties ("Only when committing adultery"), William Faulkner on Henry James ("One of the nicest old ladies I ever met"), George Bush on boredom ("What's wrong with being a boring sort of guy?"), S. J. Perelman on God ("Whom you doubtless remember as that quaint old subordinate of General Douglas MacArthur"), and Adlai Stevenson on Republicans ("If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them"). The wits of stage and screen are here--including Woody Allen ("I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...I want to achieve it by not dying"), Noel Coward, Cole Porter, Mae West, Will Rogers, and George Bernard Shaw--as are the literary wags from Kingsley Amis and Saul Bellow to Evelyn Waugh and Gore Vidal (on Eisenhower in 1964, "reading a speech with his usual sense of discovery"). Each quotation comes with details of who said it, where, and when, while separate keyword and author indices mean the reader will never have to wonder "whose line is it anyway?"
With quotations courtesy of comedians and playwrights, novelists and producers, cartoonists and moguls, soldiers and lawyers, and displaying all shades of humor, from dry to sly, subtle to wacky, and even unintended, The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations will be the perfect resource for public speakers, writers and anyone else who enjoys a sparkling line, a clever pun, or a wickedly clever riposte: after all, says W. Somerset Maughm, "Impropriety is the soul of wit."

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Review:

Some may search quotation compilations for wisdom or inspiration, but most crack these reference tomes looking for a laugh. Ned Sherrin has therefore done the world a favor by culling the witticisms and snide remarks from the vast quotation libraries, creating a volume completely dedicated to the funny remark. It's superbly browsable, but as the nearly 5,000 quotations are grouped by more than 100 themes, it's also a reference with practical applications. For a quip on consumerism, George Orwell comes through with, "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." Dean Martin opines about liquor: "You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." Ronald Knox defines a baby as "a loud noise on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other," and for politics, Art Buchwald says of Richard Nixon, "I worship the quicksand he walks in." It's an irresistible dictionary. --Stephanie Gold

About the Author:

About the Editor:
Ned Sherrin is presenter of BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends, a weekly satirical round-up of international news. He was the producer and director of the ground-breaking television comedy show, That Was The Week That Was, and has written extensively for stage and screen.

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