Customer Reviews

The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a must for anyone on your holiday list..........the book is hysterical. Some great quotes, tidbits, advice........both my husband and I fight over this book. It's a great coffee table book and conversation piece. You can't go wrong if you buy this book.

This is as fun as any number of similar books, perhaps even more so, but there are some er... surprising features:
- a fair number of the "best things anyone's ever said" were apparently said by Robert Byrne himself. Hmm...
- Where Byrne doesn't like the quote he just changes it, Oscar Wilde in particular gets mangled
- I can't prove it, but I'm sure some of these quotes are just made up: one from Andrew Mellon in particular rings false
- Sometimes he gives the source of the quote, sometimes he can't be bothered
- Michael Douglas is "Michael Douglas, actor and producer", all the other yahoos you've never heard of remain just a bunch of names

Anyway - there are 2 types of readers out there: those that find Byrne's roguishness charming, and those that don't. I'm sort of in the former group, as is Byrne himself.

Maybe 2,548 quotes but not that many different quotes. The book is a combination of his previous four books. They are placed one after the other and bound together as one book. The problem is that the books have not been culled of repeats. So, many quotes show up in all four books and therefore show up four times in this book.
I will have to say that it contains lots of quotes that I have not seen anywhere else and it is an enjoyable read. Each of the four books is organized into logical sections and related quotes in each section.
When you have ten minutes of time to kill it is easy to pick up and read a few passages and then put it down. It is an interesting read and is well worth the price even with the repeats.

Usually, I only review music, but I just have to put in my two cents on this book.

Perhaps a better title for this extremely entertaining quote book is "The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said When They Were In A Really Cynical Mood." By limiting himself to the acerbic, Robert Byrne has created a most unusual quote book. Unlike most qoute books, this is not a reference book, but rather a book to be read for pleasure.

All in all, superb bathroom reading.

The title is a bit of an overstatement, but I suppose The Big Book of Light, Frothy, Pretty Good Quotes wouldn't have the same impact. This is still a fun book. Byrne sometimes tries a bit too hard to be clever, and I particularly wish that when quoting tv shows or movies he showed the courtesy of citing that actual scriptwriter.

But these are quibbles. For about a half-cent per quote this is a good deal. There's something fun on every page, and the organizational approach of allowing one topic to flow into another related topic allows this to flow much better than other similar books (an index still lets you find particular quotes on demand).

If you enjoy this, Laurence Peter's Quotation collection is a somewhat higher quality work with the same sort of attitude.

I thought that this book was funny. For the most part, it doesn't include quotations that you will find in other places. Instead the author quotes people from Johnny Carson to Winston Churchill. There doesn't seem to be an predictable connection, except the personal preferences of the author. As such, if you thing like the author, it makes for an interesting read. I guess it would be of the most use for people who want a good quote, that few other people would use. I haven't used the book professionally, but I enjoyed reading it from time to time.

And, as a bonus, the author adds in some interesting pictures which I really enjoyed.

This book is a combination of four - 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said books. The selections have been chosen more on the basis of their humor than anything else. As such this puts it in a different category than the standard quotation books.

I generally judge quotation books on the basis of the number of Shakespeare quotations compared to those by H.L.Mencken. A preponderance of the former means that the book is primarily literary, whereas a preponderance of the latter denotes a tendency for more modern (and cynical) quotations. For the record, this book contains only three by Shakespeare and 27 by Mencken. It also contains 37 by Woody Allen, 18 by Will Rodgers, 12 by Joan Rivers, 11 by Rodney Dangerfield and 20 by Johnny Carson. Clearly, this is more of a humor book than one of literary quotations. (There are also 10 by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 7 by Samuel Johnson, 15 by Friedrich Nietzsche and 20 by George Bernard Shaw, so there is also a somewhat more serious side to some of the selections.)

Unfortunately, the quotations are not, in my opinion, sufficiently documented. There are a large number quotations just referenced as Unknown and many taken from graffiti. Where documentation is given, it is provided at the back of the book, instead being provided in the body of the book, and most of these references just point to the book of quotations from which the selection was taken. Thus, if you want to determine the exact source of the quotation you need another book. The author should have at least copied the exact source of the quotation when he took the quote itself. As it is, all you get in the text for deceased authors is a birth and death year, but not even a birth year is given for living authors. There are some previously un-referenced quotations, for which more documentation is provided, but these are in a minority.

I have several books of Quotes,and still look for more.This is an excellent collection of quotes on just about everything.
Actually it is 4 previously published books re-issued all in one volume.
The 637 Best Things Anybody ever said @1982
The Other 637 Best Things anybody ever said @ 1984
The Third-And Possibly The Best-637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
@ 1986
The Forth-And By Far The Most Recent-637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
@ 1990
Good as it is,the fact that the editors and publishers didn't bother to make combined Indexes,makes it a somewhat awkward resource to use. One feature about this book of quotes is the wonderful illustrations that accompany many of the Quotes;in fact they are generally priceless!!!
All Quotations have the name and dates of the person who is attributed with the Quote.
Along with that,each book is equipped with an Appendix of Sources,References,and Notes which would be very helpful for anyone wanting to look further into the Quote's background.And then,in case one is looking for Quotes by the author,an Index of Authors is provided with each book.
So,if looking for a good book of Quotations,this would be an excellent choice.

this is the best book of its type we have ever found. It's really funny and clever.

I already own this book and liked it so well that I purchased this one as a gift for a friend.
New condition and delivered on time, as promised.