John Bartlett - Bartletts words to live by: advice and inspiration for everyday life

Copyright 2006 by Little, Brown and Company Foreword copyright 2006 by Kurt Vonnegut All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Little, Brown and Company Warner Books, Inc. Hachette Book Group 237 Park Avenue New York, NY 10017 Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com www.twitter.com/littlebrown First eBook Edition: October 2009 The quotations in this book are from Bartletts Familiar Quotations, Seventeenth Edition, Justin Kaplan, General Editor. ISBN: 978-0-316-08669-1 Bartletts Familiar Quotations, Seventeenth EditionBartletts Book of AnecdotesBartletts Rogets ThesaurusBartletts Poems for OccasionsBartletts Bible QuotationsBartletts Shakespeare QuotationsBartletts Words to Live By A NY LIST OF GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS, the Wright brothers and Thomas Edison, and the African-American communities that gave the world the remedy for depression and despair they called the blues, and on and on, should surely include John Bartlett (1830-1905), of Boston. In 1855 he created and published the worlds first book of the sort you hold in your hands now, a compendium of short and pithy excerpts from the writings or speeches of some of the smartest or at least most famous or notorious people who ever lived.

Having mentioned your hands, though, let me call your attention to the pleasant heft of the book, almost like that of a kitten or puppy, and the dainty signals it sends to your brain from your sensitive fingertips as you turn its pages. My point: Not just this book, but any book of similar size, is flirtatious with your body, which a computer is not. And, in an age of frenzied worship of electronics, try this for a miracle: Open this or any book absolutely anywhere above water, and as long as there is any light at all, it will talk to you! And not even the FBI can listen in! Talk about privacy! Listen: As ancient and primitive in design a book may be, as unelectronic, as made of nothing but products of the fields and woodlands, its continued successes as a means of storage and retrieval of information entitle it to celebration by us all as one hell of an invention. So let us give it a razzmatazz, high-tech name, since it works so well in 2006. Why not OMA, for Open Me Anywhere? This particular OMA, and it is a honey, is intended by its editors to be a search engine, or Easter egg hunt, if you like, for persons whose name is Legion (St. Mark 5:9), hungering for inspirational or at least comforting soundbites from the past.

Find here 1,400 Easter eggs, so to speak, culled from the 25,000 for simply anybody in the seventeenth edition of Bartletts Familiar Quotations, which, according to my bathroom scale, weighs four pounds and change. My own favorite Easter egg? It isnt just for alcoholics, although it is famous as a treasure for recovering alcoholics. Nor am I an alcoholic, luckily enough, a matter not of character but of genes. There but for the Grace of God go I (Anonymous). So here goes: God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Kerpow. This was said in 1943 by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), simply as a part of a sermon on Cape Cod, Im told.

No big deal, he thought. But it was almost as though Albert Einstein (1879-1955) had been playing his fiddle and suddenly heard himself say, Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. And Niebuhrs prayer does indeed have a similar mathematical clarity. I put that prayer into a novel of mine, incidentally, which was published in what used to be the Soviet Union. I am told that thousands of people there were thunderstruck by its good sense and copied it out and put it up on a wall or whatever. And communism went bust.

As for advice or inspiration from parents instead of an OMA: William Shakespeare (1564-1616) makes fun in act one, scene three of Hamlet of how sententiously useless such advice can be, with the windbag Polonius intoning, Neither a borrower, nor a lender be, and on and on. The only advice I ever got from my own father, God rest his soul, was, Take your hands out of your pockets and stand up straight. Easier said than done (Anonymous). KURT VONNEGUT Editors note: The quotations in this book are arranged chronologically within each chapter.

A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken. The Bible, The Book of Psalms Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest. The Bible, The Book of Psalms The ear of jealousy heareth all things. The Bible, The Apocrypha, The Wisdom of Solomon Many are in high place, and of renown: but mysteries are revealed unto the meek. The Bible, The Apocrypha, The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus Yet a little while is the light with you. The Bible, The Apocrypha, The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus Yet a little while is the light with you.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you. The Bible, The Gospel According to Saint John There is a strength in the union even of very sorry men. Homer, Iliad A small rock holds back a great wave. Homer, Odyssey The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world. Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. Chuang-tzu, This Human World Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly. Marcus Licinius Crassus, From Plutarch, Lives Never find your delight in anothers misfortune. Publilius Syrus, Maxim Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Essays Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations He said not Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased but he said, Thou shalt not be overcome. Juliana of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love For he that naught n assaieth, naught n acheveth. Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia A hard beginning maketh a good ending. John Heywood, Proverbs Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. John Heywood, Proverbs Better is half a loaf than no bread. John Heywood, Proverbs In my end is my beginning. Mary, Queen of Scots, Motto Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. Francis Bacon, Essays Fight till the last gasp. William Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth, Part I To fear the worst oft cures the worse. William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida The worst is not, So long as we can say, This is the worst. William Shakespeare, King Lear The way to bliss lies not on beds of down, And he that had no cross deserves no crown. Francis Quarles, Esther When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred. Thomas Jefferson, A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Divan of East and West