- Hardcover: 576 pages
- Publisher: OUP Oxford; 4 edition (25 Sep 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0199237166
- ISBN-13: 978-0199237166
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 5.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 467,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
This hilarious collection of humorous quotations, full of wisecracks and wit, snappy comments and inspired fantasy, has been specially compiled by the late broadcaster and raconteur Ned Sherrin, with a foreword by leading British satirist, Alistair Beaton. Now packed with even more quotes and covering more subjects than before, from Weddings to the Supernatural, Australia to Headlines. Find the best lines from your favourite jokesters and wordsmiths, add that extra something to a speech or presentation, or just enjoy a good laugh. 'A chair is a piece of furniture. I am not a chair because no one has ever sat on me.' Ann Widdecombe on the announcement that Parliamentary language will now be gender-neutral. 'No wonder Bob Geldof is such an expert on famine. He's been feeding off 'I don't like Mondays' for 30 years.' Russell Brand On deciding to run for governor of California: 'The most difficult decision I've ever made in my entire life, except for the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.' Arnold Schwarzenegger 'Wanting to know an author because you like his work is like wanting to know a duck because you like pâté.' Margaret Atwood 'I am so sorry. We have to stop there. I have just come to the end of my personality.' Quentin Crisp, closing down an interview
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
IT'S AN ODD JOB, MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH.......,
By
This review is from: Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Paperback)
.....so said Moliere according to "The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations". It is also an odd (and difficult) job to determine and classify what makes people laugh, or what they find titillating, and mildly amusing. But at the end of the day (drat it, I swore that I would never use that awful expression), humour is in the eye of the beholder and something that seems amusing to one person may seem downright unfunny to another. Such is the case with this book, as there were some entries that for the life of me I failed to see anything remotely comical, humorous, funny or whatever, in them whatsoever, but obviously someone on the 'compilation panel' did find amusement.
As it would imply, this work is set out Theme-wise in alphabetical order, with an Author and a keyword alphabetical index at the rear, both of which are very useful for reference purposes. It is never going to compete for belly-laughs with the anecdotal and quotation works of Des MacHale, Rosemarie Jarski, and others, but it doesn't endeavour to. It is a very comprehensive (over 500 pages) collection and classification of thousands of quotations, gathered across the broad spectrum of literature, theatre, poetry, songs, politics, the media, and more. Whilst containing many of the more famous witticisms from the likes of Dorothy Parker, Woody Allen, W C Fields, Oscar Wilde, and Mencken, it also contains much more material that doesn't see the light of day too often and is interesting and refreshing to absorb. It is a reference work of considerable merit, that will give many years (lifetime) of good service. It is not have to be read through in haste but picked up now and again or referred to when seeking a specific topic, maybe for inclusion into a speech, letter, or Amazon review:- "Good taste and humour...are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore." (Malcolm Muggeridge)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Funny and very well researched and indexed,
This review is from: Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Hardcover)
Hours of fun.The quotations are ordered thematically + indexed both by author and keywords, which I found very useful. The page size and font used are large enough and thus very readable. I was very happy with the inclusion of short synopsis of the author and context/place of the quotation. As I mentioned in my other reviews of similar books - it's bound to have some quotations that will make you laugh out loud, some less and some will make you raise an eyebrow, but overall I think it's great. As with other compilations I found it a bit not in place to include complete poems as quotations.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed,
This review is from: Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Hardcover)
I was given this book and was looking forward to leisurely reading through 536 pages of entertainment and amusement. What a disappointment.
In fairness, and as other reviewers have noted, it pretty much does what it says on the cover - but please note use of the word "Humorous", not "witty" or "funny", and that (in my humble opinion) is where the problem lies. There's no doubt the book is well crafted - its subject matter and reference data are well compiled and detailed. It's the sort of book that a nasal bore or a librarian would put together...too much focus on the reference and indices (c200 pages) and not enough on the content (c300 pages). There are other issues that irked me, for example the number of song lyrics, which I really don't consider as quotations. So overall, I felt that whilst many of the quotations are clever or humorous, they're not necessarily funny. So I ask the question, What is the point of this Dictionary? If I want to be entertained, I want it to be funny, not a series of cleverly constructed words, and there are funnier and more concise books out there, doing the job much better than this. So, potential readers, my copy (Hardback) is off to the Charity Shop.
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