The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

‘Bermudas’ (written c.1653, published 1681)

He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night.

‘Bermudas’ (written c.1653, published 1681)

And makes the hollow seas, that roar, Proclaim the ambergris on shore.

He cast (of which we rather boast) The gospel’s pearl upon our coast.

‘Bermudas’ (written c.1653, published 1681)

Oh let our voice his praise exalt, Till it arrive at heaven’s vault:

Which thence (perhaps) rebounding, may Echo beyond the Mexique Bay.

‘Bermudas’ (written c.1653, published 1681)

My love is of a birth as rare

As ’tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown

But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

‘The Definition of Love’ (1681)

As lines (so loves) oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet: But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

‘The Definition of Love’ (1681)

Choosing each stone, and poising every weight, Trying the measures of the breadth and height; Here pulling down, and there erecting new, Founding a firm state by proportions true.

‘The First Anniversary of the Government under His Highness the Lord Protector, 1655’ l. 245

How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see

Crowned from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow vergéd shade Does prudently their toils upbraid, While all flowers and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 1

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear!

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 2

Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 2

The gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race. Apollo hunted Daphne so,

Only that she might laurel grow. And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 4

What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 5

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 6

Annihilating all that’s made

To a green thought in a green shade.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 6

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 7

Such was that happy garden-state,

While man there walked without a mate.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 8

But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share To wander solitary there:

Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone.

‘The Garden’ (1681) st. 8

He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene: But with his keener eye

The axe’s edge did try:

Nor called the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right,

But bowed his comely head, Down as upon a bed.

‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ (written 1650, published 1681) l. 57 (on Charles I)

And now the Irish are ashamed

To see themselves in one year tamed: So much one man can do,

That does both act and know.

‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ (written 1650, published 1681) l. 75

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late, And studying all the summer night, Her matchless songs does meditate;

Ye country comets, that portend No war, nor prince’s funeral, Shining unto no higher end

Then to presage the grass’s fall.

‘The Mower to the Glow-worms’ (1681)

It is a wondrous thing, how fleet ’Twas on those little silver feet. With what a pretty skipping grace, It oft would challenge me the race: And when ’t had left me far away,

’Twould stay, and run again, and stay. For it was nimbler much than hinds; And trod, as on the foùr winds.

‘The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn’ (1681) l. 63

I have a garden of my own

Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

‘To His Coy Mistress’ (1681) l. 41

He is translation’s thief that addeth more, As much as he that taketh from the store Of the first author.

‘To His Worthy Friend Dr Witty’ (1651)

What need of all this marble crust T’impark the wanton mote of dust.

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 3

A stately frontispiece of poor Adorns without the open door:

Nor less the rooms within commends Daily new furniture of friends.

The House was built upon the place Only as for a mark of grace;

And for an inn to entertain

Its lord a while, but not remain.

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 9

Oh thou, that dear and happy isle The garden of the world ere while, Thou paradise of four seas,

Which heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the world, did guard With watery if not flaming sword; What luckless apple did we taste, To make us mortal, and thee waste?

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 41

For he did, with his utmost skill, Ambition weed, but conscience till: Conscience, that heaven-nurséd plant, Which most our earthy gardens want. A prickling leaf it bears, and such

As that which shrinks at every touch; But flowers eternal, and divine, That in the crowns of saints do shine.

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 45

And now to the abyss I pass Of that unfathomable grass,

Where men like grasshoppers appear,

But grasshoppers are giants there: They, in their squeaking laugh, contemn Us as we walk more low than them: And, from the precipices tall

Of the green spires, to us do call.

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 47

Unhappy birds! what does it boot To build below the grass’s root, When lowness is unsafe as height,

And chance o’ertakes, what ’scapeth spite?

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 52

’Tis not what once it was, the world, But a rude heap together hurled.

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 96

But now the salmon-fishers moist Their leathern boats begin to hoist; And, like Antipodes in shoes,

Have shod their heads in their canoes. How tortoise-like, but not so slow, These rational amphibii go!

‘Upon Appleton House’ (1681) st. 97

1.82 Holt Marvell

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces, An airline ticket to romantic places; And still my heart has wings

These foolish things Remind me of you.

‘These Foolish Things Remind Me of You’ (1935 song)

1.83 Chico Marx 1891-1961

I wasn’t kissing her, I was just whispering in her mouth.

On being discovered by his wife with a chorus girl, in Groucho Marx and Richard J. Anobile ‘Marx Brothers Scrapbook’ (1973) ch. 24

1.84 Groucho Marx 1895-1977

please accept my resignation. i don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

‘Groucho and Me’ (1959) ch. 26

I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.

In Leo Rosten ‘People I have Loved, Known or Admired’ (1970) ‘Groucho’

I like a cigar, but every now and again I take it out of my mouth.

To a lady, who was the mother of ten children; attributed

1.85 Karl Marx 1818-83

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’ (written 1875) but of earlier origin. Morelly ‘Code de la nature’ (1755) pt. 4, p. 190, and J. J. L. Blanc ‘Organisation du travail’ (1839) p. 126 (who, in quoting Saint-Simon, rejects the notion) for possible sources.

Religion...is the opium of the people.

‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ (1843-4) introduction.

Mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ (1859) preface (translation by D. McLellan)

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ (1859) preface

And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement—and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society—it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.

‘Das Kapital’ (1st German ed., 1867) preface (25 July 1865)

Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in world history reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ (1852) sect. 1.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

‘Theses on Feuerbach’ (written 1845, published 1888) no. 11

What I did that was new was to prove...that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer 5 March 1852. The phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ had earlier been used in the Constitution of the World Society of Revolutionary Communists (1850), signed by Marx and others. Marx claimed that the phrase had been coined by Auguste Blanqui (1805-81), but it has not been found in this form in Blanqui’s work. D. Fernbach (ed.) ‘Karl Marx: The Revolutions of 1848: Political Writings’ (1973 vol. 1, p. 24

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

Attributed in a letter from Engels to C. Schmidt, 5 August 1890

1.86 Karl Marx 1818-83 and Friedrich Engels 1820-95

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.

‘The Communist Manifesto’ (1848) opening words

Firewood, ironware, and cheap tin trays.

‘Cargoes’ (1903)

In the dark womb where I began My mother’s life made me a man.

Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth.

I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.

‘C.L.M.’ (1910)

Jane brought the bowl of stewing gin And poured the egg and lemon in, And whisked it up and served it out While bawdy questions went about.

Jack chucked her chin, and Jim accost her With bits out of the ‘Maid of Gloster’. And fifteen arms went round her waist. (And then men ask, Are Barmaids Chaste?)

‘The Everlasting Mercy’ (1911) st. 26

The corn that makes the holy bread By which the soul of man is fed, The holy bread, the food unpriced, Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.

‘The Everlasting Mercy’ (1911) st. 86

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.

‘Sea Fever’ (1902)

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.

‘Sea Fever’ (1902)

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

‘Sea Fever’ (1902)

Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.

‘Pompey The Great’ (1910) act 2

1.92 Donald Mason 1913—