The book world is full of compendiums

 

                And yet a writers’ group to which I USED to belong refused to critique MINE. After that-- to prove a point to myself-- I searched for book collections of trivia, sayings, quizzes, quotations, etc. And I found many such volumes.

Lately, in Eureka Springs at Echo, a thrift store, I found two assemblages, The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (in Two Lines or Less) edited by John M. Shanahan, and The 2548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, selected and compiled by Robert Byrne. Both are more than an inch thick.

Let’s see how far down the alphabet we get with a sampling of Shanahan’s collection of brilliant thoughts.

 

A – Adversity introduces a man to himself. –Anonymous.

B—Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend. –Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw], 1818-1885.

C –Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking. –Henry Louis Mencken, 1880-1956.

D –Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason. –Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, 1694-1773.

E—Everybody wants to be somebody: Nobody wants to grow. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1834.

F –Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them.—Suzanne Necker, 1739-1794.

G—Good families are generally worse than any others.—Anthony Hope [Anthony Hope Hawkins], 1863-1933.

H—He who is most creative conceals his sources the best.—Anonymous.

I – If you don’t bring Paris with you, you won’t find it there.—John M. Shanahan, 1939- ––.

J –Jesters do oft prove prophets. – William Shakespeare, 1564-1616.

K –Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. – Herman Hesse, 1877-1962.

L –Love of fame is the last thing even learned men can bear to be parted from. –Cornelius Tacitus, c.56-120.

M – Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen. – George Savile, Marquess de Halifax, 1633-1695.

N—Nobody forgets where he buried the hatchet. –Frank McKinney “Kin” Hubbard, 1868-1930.

O – One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. –Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900.

P –People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.—Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, 1694-1773.

Q—Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.—Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680.

R—Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength. – Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983.

S—Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.—Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862.

T—That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent. –Aldous Leonard Huxley, 1894-1963.

U—Upper Classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future.—Ayn Rand, 1905-1982.

V—Vows begin when hope dies.—Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519.

W—Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions. –Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882.

X—Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.—Aldous Huxley (see T above).

Y—You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.—George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950.

Z—Zest for living is an antidote to dying.—Pat Laster, after searching in vain for a Z word, 1936-––.