For the preacher, teacher, public speaker and magazine editor these books are a godsend. They represent a lifetime of carefully collected wit and wisdom, humour and earthy common sense to suit all tastes.

G. K. Chesterton once offered an explan­ation of what Jesus was up to on the numerous occasions when he is said to have left his disci­ples and gone off into the hills on his own. He suggested that Jesus simply had to get away from time to time to laugh his head off over the absurd things we do and say, espe­cially in the name of religion.

There are plenty of such examples in these collections, each con­taining over 500 quips, quotes and observations, well balanced by the many profound epigrams into which wise people through the ages have compressed their insights.

'If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.'

Sir Isaac Newton