THE NEW PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS ...

THE NEW PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS edited by J. M. & M. J. Cohen (Penguin: $14; 726 pp.) This reference volume has been expanded to include more citations from 20th-Century figures. Although the editors note, “it is not always those who are most read or respected who have left the greatest number of sayings in the popular memory” their choices reflect an Anglophile bias: Mishima, Genet, Steinbeck and Mann are omitted, while 178 entries are included for Alexander Pope. Comments on the human condition (“A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers”--Camus) are juxtaposed with H. H. Munro’s “The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went.”