The Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams (Penguin Reference Books)

Oscar Wilde once had a character remark, "He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram". Here are over 5,000 instances of writers wielding the knife on their best friends! From Socrates to Julie Burchill via St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, George Eliot, Dorothy Parker and Bob Dylan, "The Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams" covers 2,500 years of pithy, witty and wise sayings. The epigrams are arranged thematically so that the reader can scan the thoughts of writers throughout history on such diverse topics as animals, beauty, death, life, fashion, madness and sports. This means that D.H. Lawrence ("Life makes no absolute statement. It is all Call and Answer") and John Lennon ("Life is what happens to us while we're making other plans") sit side by side in the section on life, while Rousseau ("The most infallible way to make your child miserable is to accustom him to obtain everything he desires"), and Dr. Seuss ("Adults are obsolete children") compare notes on children. In this anthology, M.J. Cohen not only provides the browser with hours of entertaining, stimulating reading, but also presents anyone in search of the witty, sharp remark on any subject with the perfect reference book.

Mark Cohen is a publishing consultant and editor. He is a very experienced quotations collector, having edited 'The Penguin Thematic Dictionary of Quotations' and 'The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth Century Quotations', which he wrote with his father. He lives in Muswell Hill, north London.