PRICE - 1001 Smartest Things Ever Said

W hat qualifies an utterance to be among the smartest things ever said? In other words, what do we mean by smart? Mental alertness or resourcefulness is one meaning, and youll find that all the entries in this compendium share that quality: a perceptiveness with regard to the human condition in its many manifestations. Smart also means stylish (that dress looks smart on you), and many of the entries are indeed elegant in their use of language. Witty too, both in their cleverness and in the eighteenth-century use of the word that meant good sense: Alexander Pope said it best when he wrote that true wit is Nature to advantage dressed / What oft was said but neer so well expressed. Smart also means a sharp pain (ouch, that smarts!).

Many of the entries provoke just such a response: a shock of recognition or an uncomfortable jolt to our prejudices and preconceptions. One category, however, will not seem full of paradigms of originality, and that is proverbs. The very nature of proverbs involves a lack of originality; they epitomize what oft was said. But to find them unoriginal or, worse, time-worn clichs, is to miss the point. Proverbs are time-worn because they have been used so much; if they did not contain so much distilled folk wisdom that speaks to new generations with renewed vigor, they would have disappeared through the very same folk process by which they were created. The range of these quotationsas many written as having been spokentouches every human situation and activity.

Those in Life and Death (And Some of What Happens in Between) span from the cradle to the grave. The Life of the Mind examines the intellectual, while interpersonal relationships are the subject of Love and Friendship. Both the spiritual and the worldly figure prominently in Success, and Ways to Achieve It and Politics and Politicians, Government and Statesmen. Proverbs is a concentration of just that, although many other proverbs appear where and when especially relevant in other chapters. The contributors consist of no less a wide range. William Shakespeare and Yogi Berra, the Bible and Joseph Stalin, Dwight Eisenhower and Keith Richards and Mick Jaggerstrange bedfellows perhaps, but that simply demonstrates that there is no monopoly on wisdom.

The criteria by which a quotation qualified for inclusion among the 1001 Smartest boiled down to profundity and variety. Although some readers may take issue with what has been included and, equally intriguing, what has been omitted, that is theirthat is to say, yourright and privilege. And lest someone point out that some entries contradict others, as in absence makes the heart grow fonder or out of sight, out of mind, the very nature of human wisdom is often contractory. Which entry in the entire book qualifies as the smartest? Although wisdom is seldom a competition sport, thats a question Ive been asked, and more than once. My response is to share the memory of a television drama from the 1950s, on a series that older readers may recall as Four Star Playhouse. The setting was a bar into which a group of people had wandered to seek companionship in face of the worlds coming to an end (I cant recall how or why, but Armageddon was nigh). One of the patrons had a computervery much a novelty fifty years agointo which he had entered all of the worlds literature.

Surrounded by the other patrons, he then asked the computer to answer the question, how can the world be saved? After much whirring of gears and flashing of lights (remember, this was the 50s), the answer began: I am the Lord Thy God; Thou shalt have no other god before me. and thereafter followed the rest of the Ten Commandments. One writers opinion, but certainly food for thought. Much has changed in the past fifty years. True wisdom, however, has not because it does not; truth abideth forever. STEVEN D. STEVEN D.

PRICE NEW YORK, N.Y. MAY, 2004 Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Sren Kierkegaard There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. George Santayana The future you shall know when it has come; before then forget it. Aeschylus Ones own thought is ones world. Maitri Upanishads Time ripens all things; no man is born wise. Miguel de Cervantes A baby is Gods opinion that life should go on. Carl Sandburg It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father. Pope John XXIII The most important question in the world is, Why is the child crying? Alice Walker If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. Bruce Barton If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves. Carl Jung Aint no man can avoid being born average, but there aint no man got to be common.