A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles From Ancient and Modern Sources

THE Scriptural definition of good measure, of which this compilation is an illustrious example (“pressed down, and shaken together, and running over”), is apparently absent from its 1800-odd pages. So is Bierce’s definition of Forefinger, n. (“the finger commonly used to point out two malefactors”). The wayfaring reader hunts in vain for ancient seasonal warnings of the folk wisdom, like “Stick to your woolens till they stick to you,” and the injunction never to “cast a clout till May be out.” The smallest tribute possible to offer is one’s unfailing astonishment at such omissions. Think of what quotably aphoristic sentiment you will, from Homer to E. W. Howe, and the chances are at least nineteen to one that you will find it here. An announcement by the publisher claims, with unprecedented mathematical restraint, 33,000 entries; a quick computation from random groups of pages suggests that there may actually be all of 50,000. Besides this copiousness, the two great merits of the book are: (1) its painstaking accuracy in the matter of dates and original sources, and (2) its ideally convenient alphabetical arrangement in a single system of rubrics, with no apparatus of any kind outside of careful cross-references to every alternative rubric under which a sensible person could be expected to look.

There is included an appreciable but not an extravagant allowance of the inveterate Menckenian wickedness. Examples: (1) “‘This is the culminating and final war for human liberty.’ Woodrow Wilson: Message to Congress, Jan. 8, 1918”; (2) “‘To bring about government by oligarchy, masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our Federal government. . . .’ F. D. Roosevelt: Radio speech, March 2, 1930.” W. F.