A well-thought-out compilation that offers many intriguing insights.
Jones presents a collection of wise words from famous names and sources throughout history.
This book of quotations includes chapters on topics such as “War & Peace,” “Science & Technology,” and “Education.” Each chapter includes musings by a wide range of famous figures, from Oprah Winfrey to Socrates to Joseph Conrad. The topic of “Government, Politics & Social Justice” includes such varied sources as Benjamin Franklin (“Pardoning the bad is injuring the good”) and Margaret Thatcher (“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom”). “Creativity, Innovation & Curiosity” quotes filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille (“Creativity is a drug I cannot live without”) and novelist Ellen Glasgow (“No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated”). Each chapter includes further commentary from Jones. On the contents of “Spirituality, Faith & Philosophy,” he points out that “we are warned not to lose our leisure if we want to retain our souls.” Additional elements include the intriguing “Great Minds Think Alike,” in which Gore Vidal is credited with “A work of art is never finished; it is only abandoned” and George Lucas with “Films are never completed, they are abandoned.” Sports figures Bobby Unser, John McEnroe, and Tommy Lasorda all share thoughts on the desire to win, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Cicero, Woodrow Wilson, and George Bernard Shaw offer views on the responsibilities of liberty. “Wisdom Meditations” provide readers with an opportunity to use ideas from several sources to focus on a “Central Question,” such as “What is happiness?” or “Why am I not more creative?”
Much of the content is undeniably thought provoking. For example, “Humor & the Immortal Yogi Berra” includes an insightful remark from Shaw: “When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.” A page devoted to “The Many Sides of Failure” contains familiar gems such as “Failure is the fertilizer of success” from motivational speaker Denis Waitley. Although the idea is nothing new, hearing it from a group of successful people has real impact. Some quotes, though, are perhaps a bit too recognizable to have much power; J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Not all those who wander are lost,” from The Fellowship of the Ring, or Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” appear in many similar collections. Nevertheless, what sets this book apart from others is the author’s clear goal for readers to make complex connections and learn something from it all. Each chapter contains recommendations for other chapters, and the “Wisdom Meditations” offer a novel way of thinking deeply on various questions. The emphasis is not on simply reading the quotes for fun, but on using them in practical ways. As the author concludes, “Wisdom’s true value becomes realized when we put it into action.” Overall, this is certainly not just a random assortment of quotes, since it allows for contemplation in a carefully curated way.
A well-thought-out compilation that offers many intriguing insights.Pub Date: May 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780998324029
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dreamquest Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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