The Faber Book of Aphorisms: A Personal Selection

by auden-w-h-kronenberger-louis (Editor), W.H. Auden (Editor)

Excellent Book

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference

405 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

Reviews

[Usfromdk · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag: Many good quotes are included, including some new ones by familiar names which I had not encountered before, but also far too many bad ones. There were many quotes included on topics in which I'm not remotely interested (e.g. artists, poetry), and not enough quotes on topics in which I am interested. To give an example of the priorities of the editors of this book, the book includes only four and a half pages of quotes about the topic of science (very few of them any good) but on the other hand it devotes a whopping 26 full pages to 'The Arts' and another 20 pages to 'Religion and God'. There were multiple quotes which were included more than once in the book, I spotted at least seven or eight quotes which featured more than once in different sections (I stopped counting after the first few repeats, because by then I had realized that it was not a single slip-up or two, but rather a systematic issue), and I really do not like repeats in books like these.

Worth reading if you're into this kind of book and I did like it on account of the few gems included, but if you are just looking for good quotes you hardly need to read the book in full - you could probably skip entire chapters of this one completely without missing a single worthwhile quote, which is perhaps a somewhat damning observation, in my opinion, as it is obviously very far from a desirable state of affairs that you be able to do something like that when reading books of this nature.