Immortal Words: History's Most Memorable Quotations and the Stories Behind Them [Hardcover]

Terry Breverton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2010

Immortal Words is an anthology of history's most memorable, uplifting or thought-provoking quotations from all ages and nations. The texts are drawn not only from the works and words of great writers, thinkers and orators, but also from less well-known sources such as gravestones, book dedications, speeches and political manifestos, letters and diaries, inscriptions and chance remarks. Each of the 370 quotations is accompanied by an extended annotation that tells the story of the speaker or explains the circumstances that gave rise to the quotation. The words and sentiments expressed have been used to encapsulate the human condition, to inspire great works or deeds in times of hardship, or simply reflect the spirit of the time - they will live with you and inspire you day by day, from one year's end to the next. Sample entries include: Marcus Aurelius - 'Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul '. Martin Luther King - 'I have a dream '. John F. Kennedy - 'Ask not, what your country '. John Gillespie Magee, Royal Air Force pilot, 1941 - 'High Flight'. Ronald Reagan - 'Tear down his wall '. Isadora Duncan - on her sickbed, writes a feverishly passionate letter to her lover, the actor Gordon Craig. Mother Teresa of Calcutta - 'Life is '. Colonel Tim Collins of the Royal Irish Regiment, March 19 2003 - 'We come not to conquer ". Emma Lazarus - 'The New Colossus' (plaque on Statue of Liberty). Joseph Stalin - first broadcast to the Russian people after the German invasion, July 3 1941. Mahatma Gandhi - 'I am a man of peace '. Abraham Lincoln - on leaving Springfield, Illinois, to take the oath as President. February 11, 1861. Cicero - quoting Cato the Elder, in De Senectute (On Old Age), 44 BC. Charles Lindbergh - describing the last minutes of his pioneering non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Nelson Mandela - 'I am the First Accused'. Buddha - 'All acts of living creatures become bad by ten things '. Benjamin Franklin - writes a first draft of his own epitaph. Thomas Jefferson - 'Force cannot change right Winston Churchill - 'Never in the field of human conflict '. Adolf Hitler - 'My patience is now at an end'. Edward Everett - President of Harvard on the protest of the student body against the admission of a Negro student. Francis Bacon - 'This world's a bubble; and the life of Man Less than a span '. Horatio Nelson - 'Separated from all I hold dear in this world '. Charlotte Cushman - inscription on the curtain of Ford's Opera House, Baltimore. Shakespeare - 'Once more unto the breach ' Henry V. Marie Antoinette - letter to her sister on the day of her execution. Ludwig Van Beethoven - 'I carry my ideas about me for along time, often a very long time '. Aldous Huxley 1920- 'A million million spermatozoa '. Eleanor Roosevelt - speaking on the function of hatred in a just cause. Indira Gandhi - 'Women's education is almost more important than the education of boys and men.'

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Terry Breverton is a former businessman, consultant and academic and now a full-time writer. He is the author of numerous books has been awarded the Welsh Books Council 'Book of the Month' award five times.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Arcturus (July 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848660049
• ISBN-13: 978-1848660045
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #851,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptionally interesting book, July 1, 2011

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Immortal Words: History's Most Memorable Quotations and the Stories Behind Them (Hardcover)

This work is not exactly what it says it is. It does not in every one of its article highlight or even give the last words of the person. For many of the three hundred seventy stories of the end of the person's life it does. Essentially what it does is aim to tell the story of the end of the person's life and work in an interesting way. And most often in this book it succeeds.

In fact I found the book an exceptionally interesting one. When it tells of the final day of Martin Luther King it gives us his last great speech in which he speaks not knowing whether he as a person will reach the Promised Land, but knowing 'we as a people' will reach the Promised Land'. When he writes about Virginia Woolf he gives us her suicide note a painfully moving document. In it she apologizes to her husband Leonard Woolf and comments on how great a happiness they had, and how no one could have been better to her than him.

Breverton is an exceptionally good story- teller and simply knows how to provide information which is interesting. If I have an objection about the book it is that he includes the last moments of some of the monsters of human history. I would have preferred not to see them here. There is also of course a certain bias in the selection and an overdose of the English.

But on the whole a truly outstanding piece of work.