The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation

When you want to launch a new chapter, win a fight, spice a speech, or merely wax philosophical before the fire, there's nothing like an apt quotation. Elizabeth Knowles has compiled more than 10,000 pithy phrases covering more than 350 themes, from "Absence" and "Achievement" to "Writing" and "Youth." Flip through the pages and there's Sydney Smith saying, "I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland"; Tom Lehrer opining, "Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it"; and Gloria Steinem reflecting, "We are becoming the men we wanted to marry." It's a sparkling collection, so finely indexed that it won't take all day to find the quote you seek.