Good Advice on Writing: Writers Past and Present on How to Write Well

by William Safire and Leonard Safir

Book Overview

More than 2,000 Quotations to Help You Live Your Life. Here's life's big instruction booka treasury of personal quotations that actually tell you what to do. Proverbs, wise sayings and observations on... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671770055
• ISBN13: 9780671770051
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

I am going to buy a this book for everyone in my family.

I bought this book at a book sale for $2.00 and was surprised at how much I liked it. I recently had a difficult decision to make, picked up this book, and it actually helped! I am going to buy one for my children and grandchildren. It is not only "good advise" but a lot of fun to read. I sit down to read just a few sentences and stay a lot longer than I intended. Great for a coffee table, guest room, or bathroom!!

Absolutely amazing ,except for one thing!

This book is overflowing with good advice. 400 pages and 2000 quotations of wisdom from the sages of the ages. The authors go through the alphabet and give several quotations for a whole bunch of topics starting with each letter. For instance under the letter "R" he covers;Reading,Reality,Reason,Recreation,Regretting,Relationships ,Relatives,Religion Reputation,Resignation/Acceptance & Resolution. Now ,with that much coverage for every letter ,you'd think they would have touched on everything. Well,not so,they have made one glaring ommission---they never did get around to giving any advice as to what to do with all that good advice.Now ,maybe that isn't too bad because that allows us to do with it as we see fit. Personally,I intend to apply it to myself rather than to lay it on someone who needs it more;which is highly unlikely.People have been giving me advice all my life ;but the only advice I ever followed is what I figured out for myself. With that said;here are a few bits of advice that struck me as pretty good: "Wherever you go ,have a woman friend" -Irish Proverb "Love your neighbor,but don't tear down the fence." -German Proverb "When in doubt,tell the truth." - Mark Twain "Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you." -American Proverb. "Remember The Alamo!" "Remember The Maine!" "Remember Pearl Harbor!" --War Slogans To which we should now add: Remember 9/11! "When you strike at a king,you must kill him." -Ralph Waldo Emerson "Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master." -Demosthenes "Don't be a fool and die for your country.Let the other sonofabitch die for his." -George S. Patton "If your head is wax,don't walk in the sun." -Ben Franklin "Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear,but around in awareness." -James Thurber And lastly,even some good advice from Nikita Khrushchev; "If you cannot catch a Bird of Paradise,better take a wet hen." You can't go wrong with the advice you'll find here.

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook" William James

This work gives life- advice by subject. Each subject such as "Resignation" "Resolution" "Rest- Relaxation" "Restraint" has around five to ten quotations devoted to it. The quotations are from a wide variety of sources, and provide the kind of 'dipping in ' pleasure that books of this sort usually do. The idea is that " the more than 2,000 quotations' are to help you live your life. Whether or not they will do that is of course a real question. My suspicion is most books of this kind have their chief value in the small pleasure we get from them while reading them. But who knows what 'Eureka' any particular reader will find on any page. In any case there is much here to delight in( and not a little to overlook and ignore.") "If you wish yur merit to be known, acknowledge that of other people." Jewish proverb "Be not ashamed of mistakes and make them crimes." Confucian proverb "Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart." Longfellow "Get pleasure out of life... as much as you can. Nobody ever died from pleasure." Sol Hurok "I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains... My advice is: Go outside, to the fields, enjoy nature and the sunshine, go out and try to recapture happiness in yourself and in God. Think of all the beauty that's still left in and around you and be happy! Anne Frank

Thoughtfulness multiplies

The two Mr. Safires express their joy in finding such concise expresions of good advice. Like poetry, good advice does sum up a whole lot of feelings and thoughts in one or two punchy phrases. Language is really neat that way, and I like the book for that, too. But what I love about this book, and why I bought it for myself and my littlest brother, is that each sentence reminds the reader that each of us is mulling over the same worries, and same concerns and the same desires... for success, for friendship, for self improvement. So the good advice is all the more useful, because it comes with a connection to other people who were thinking just like you at some point.