The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Let the saints be joyful with glory: let them rejoice in their beds.

Let the praises of God be in their mouth: and a two-edged sword in their hands; To be avenged of the heathen: and to rebuke the people;

To bind their kings in chains: and their nobles with links of iron.

Psalm 149, v. 5

Praise him upon the well-tuned cymbals: praise him upon the loud cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath: praise the Lord.

Psalm 150, v. 5

Be pleased to receive into thy Almighty and most gracious protection the persons of us thy servants, and the Fleet in which we serve.

‘Forms of Prayer to be Used at Sea’, first prayer

That we may be...a security for such as pass on the seas upon their lawful occasions.

‘Forms of Prayer to be Used at Sea’, first prayer

We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the Sea shall give up her dead).

‘Forms of Prayer to be Used at Sea’ ‘At the Burial of their Dead at Sea’

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, And lighten with celestial fire.

Thou the anointing Spirit art,

Who dost thy seven-fold gifts impart.

Thy blessed Unction from above,

Is comfort, life, and fire of love.

Enable with perpetual light

The dulness of our blinded sight.

Anoint and cheer our soiléd face With the abundance of thy grace.

Keep far our foes, give peace at home:

Where thou art guide, no ill can come.

‘Ordering of Priests’ ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.

‘Articles of Religion’ (1562) no. 6

Man is very far gone from original righteousness.

‘Articles of Religion’ (1562) no. 9

It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church, to have publick Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

‘Articles of Religion’ (1562) no. 24

The sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and

dangerous deceits.

‘Articles of Religion’ (1562) no. 31

The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.

‘Articles of Religion’ (1562) no. 37

It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars.

‘Articles of Religion’ (1562) no. 37

The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast.

‘Articles of Religion’ (1562) no. 38

A Man may not marry his Mother.

‘A Table of Kindred and Affinity’

4.94 Keith Preston 1884-1927

Of all the literary scenes Saddest this sight to me:

The graves of little magazines Who died to make verse free.

‘The Liberators’

4.95 Jacques Prèvert 1900-77

Il a mis le cafè Dans la tasse Il a mis le lait

Dans la tasse de cafè Il a mis le sucre Dans le cafè au lait Avec la petite cuiller Il a tournè

Il a bu le cafè au lait Et il a reposè la tasse Sans me parler.

He put the coffee in the cup. He put the milk in the cup of coffee. He put the sugar in the white coffee, with the tea-spoon, he stirred. He drank the white coffee and he put the cup down.

Without speaking to me.

‘Dèjeuner du Matin’

C’est tellement simple, l’amour.

Love is so simple.

‘Les Enfants du Paradis’ (1945 film)

Notre Pére qui êtes aux cieux

And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart.

‘A Better Answer’

Be to her virtues very kind; Be to her faults a little blind;

Let all her ways be unconfined;

And clap your padlock—on her mind.

‘An English Padlock’ l. 79

Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, The son of Adam and of Eve,

Can Stuart or Nassau go higher?

‘Epitaph’ (1702)

For the idiom of words very little she heeded, Provided the matter she drove at succeeded, She took and gave languages just as she needed.

‘Jinny the Just’

Venus, take my votive glass; Since I am not what I was, What from this day I shall be, Venus, let me never see.

‘The Lady who Offers her Looking-Glass to Venus’

The merchant, to secure his treasure, Conveys it in a borrowed name: Euphelia serves to grace my measure; But Chloe is my real flame.

‘An Ode’

He ranged his tropes, and preached up patience; Backed his opinion with quotations.

‘Paulo Purganti and his Wife’ l. 138

Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician.

‘The Remedy Worse than the Disease’

What is a King?—a man condemned to bear The public burden of the nation’s care.

‘Solomon’ (1718) bk. 3, l. 275

For, as our different ages move,

’Tis so ordained (would Fate but mend it!) That I shall be past making love,

When she begins to comprehend it.

‘To a Child of Quality of Five Years Old’

From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise.

‘To the Hon. Charles Montague’ st. 9.

No, no; for my virginity,

When I lose that, says Rose, I’ll die: Behind the elms last night, cried Dick, Rose, were you not extremely sick?

‘A True Mind’

They never taste who always drink; They always talk, who never think.

‘Upon this Passage in Scaligerana’

4.100 V. S. Pritchett 1900—

The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all the great best-sellers.

‘The Living Novel’ (1946) ‘Clarissa’

What Chekhov saw in our failure to communicate was something positive and precious: the private silence in which we live, and which enables us to endure our own solitude. We live, as his characters do, beyond any tale we happen to enact.

‘Myth Makers’ (1979) ‘Chekhov, a doctor’

The detective novel is the art-for-art’s-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.

‘New Statesman’ 16 June 1951 ‘Books in General’

4.101 Adelaide Ann Procter 1825-64

Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease,

And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys.

‘A Lost Chord’ (1858)

But I struck one chord of music, Like the sound of a great Amen.

‘A Lost Chord’ (1858)

4.102 Propertius c.50-c.16 B.C.

Navita de ventis, de tauris narrat arator, Enumerat miles vulnera, pastor oves.

The seaman tells stories of winds, the ploughman of bulls; the soldier details his wounds, the

shepherd his sheep.

‘Elegies’ bk. 2, no. 1, l. 43

Quod si deficiant vires, audacia certe

Laus erit: in magnis et voluisse sat est.

Even if strength fail, boldness at least will deserve praise: in great endeavours even to have had

the will is enough.

‘Elegies’ bk. 2, no. 10, l. 5

Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Grai! Nescioquid maius nascitur Iliade.

Make way, you Roman writers, make way, Greeks! Something greater than the Iliad is born.

‘Elegies’ bk. 2, no. 34, l. 65 (meaning Virgil’s Aeneid)

4.103 Protagoras c.485-c.415 B.C.

Man is the measure of all things.

In Plato ‘Theaetetus’ 160d

4.104 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 1809-65

La propriètè c’est le vol.

Property is theft.

‘Qu’est-ce que la propriètè?’ (1840) ch.1

4.105 Marcel Proust 1871-1922

A la recherche du temps perdu.

In search of lost time.

Title of novel (1913-27), translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and S. Hudson, 1922-31, as ‘Remembrance of things past’

On devient moral dés qu’on est malheureux.

As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral.

‘A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs’ (Within a Budding Grove, 1918, translated 1924 by C. K. ScottMoncrieff, vol. 1, p. 290)

Tout ce que nous connaissons de grand nous vient des nerveux. Ce sont eux et non pas d’autres qui ont fondè les religions et composè les chefs-d’oeuvre. Jamais le monde ne saura tout ce qu’il leur doit et surtout ce qu’eux ont souffert pour le lui donner.

All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and they only who have founded religions and created great works of art. Never will the world be conscious of how

much it owes to them, nor above all of what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.

‘Le côtè de Guermantes’ (Guermantes Way, 1921, translated 1925 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, p. 418)

Il n’y a rien comme le dèsir pour empêcher les choses qu’on dit d’avoir aucune ressemblance avec ce qu’on a dans la pensèe.

There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in mind.

‘Le côtè de Guermantes’ (Guermantes Way, 1921, translated 1925 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 60)

Un artiste n’a pas besoin d’exprimer directement sa pensèe dans son ouvrage pour que celui-ci en refléte la qualitè; on a même pu dire que la louange la plus haute de Dieu est dans la nègation de l’athèe qui trouve la Crèation assez parfaite pour se passer d’un crèateur.

An artist has no need to express his mind directly in his work for it to express the quality of that mind; it has indeed been said that the highest praise of God consists in the denial of Him by

the atheist, who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

‘Le côtè de Guermantes’ (Guermantes Way, 1921, translated 1925 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 147)

Longtemps, je me suis couchè de bonne heure.

For a long time I used to go to bed early.

‘Du côtè de chez Swann’ (Swann’s Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, p. 1)

Je portai á mes lévres une cuillerèe du thè oû j’avais laissè s’amollir un morceau de madeleine...

Et tout d’un coup le souvenir m’est apparu. Ce goût c’ètait celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin á Combray...ma tante Lèonie m’offrait aprés l’avoir trempè dans son infusion de thè ou de tilleul.

I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of cake...And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray...my aunt Lèonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or

of lime-flower tea.

‘Du côtè de chez Swann’ (Swann’s Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, pp. 46 and 61)

Et il ne fut plus question de Swann chez les Verdurin.

After which there was no more talk of Swann at the Verdurins’.

‘Du côtè de chez Swann’ (Swann’s Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 99)

Dire que j’ai gâchè des annèes de ma vie, que j’ai voulu mourir, que j’ai eu mon plus grand amour, pour une femme qui ne me plaisait pas, qui n’ètait pas mon genre!

To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for death, that the greatest love

that I have ever known has been for a woman who did not please me, who was not in my style!

‘Du côtè de chez Swann’ (Swann’s Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 228)

Du reste, continua Mme de Cambremer, j’ai horreur des couchers de soleil, c’est romantique, c’est opèra.

‘Anyhow,’ Mme de Cambremer went on, ‘I have a horror of sunsets, they’re so romantic, so

operatic.’

‘Sodome et Gomorrhe’ (Cities of the Plain, 1922, translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, p. 296)

Une de ces dèpêches dont M. de Guermantes avait spirituellement fixè le modéle: ‘Impossible venir, mensonge suit’.

One of those telegrams of which the model had been wittily invented by M. de Guermantes:

‘Impossible to come, lie follows’.

‘Le temps retrouvè’ (Time Regained, 1926, translated 1931 by S. Hudson, ch. 1, p. 7).

Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu’on a perdus.

The true paradises are paradises we have lost.

‘Le temps retrouvè’ (Time Regained, 1926, translated 1931 by S. Hudson, ch. 3, p. 215)

Le bonheur seul est salutaire pour le corps, mais c’est le chagrin qui dèveloppe les forces de l’esprit.

Happiness is salutary for the body but sorrow develops the powers of the spirit.

‘Le temps retrouvè’ (Time Regained, 1926, translated 1931 by S. Hudson, ch. 3, p. 259)

4.106 Publilius Syrus

Formosa facies muta commendatio est.

A beautiful face is a mute recommendation.

‘Sententiae’ no. 199, in J. W. and A. M. Duff ‘Minor Latin Poets’ (Loeb ed., 1934); translated by Francis Bacon in Apophthegms no. 12

Inopi beneficium bis dat qui dat celeriter.

He gives the poor man twice as much good who gives quickly.

‘Sententiae’ no. 274, in J. W. and A. M. Duff ‘Minor Latin Poets’ (Loeb ed., 1934); proverbially Bis dat qui cito dat He gives twice who gives soon

Iudex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur.

The judge is condemned when the guilty party is acquitted.

‘Sententiae’ no. 296, in J. W. and A. M. Duff ‘Minor Latin Poets’ (Loeb ed., 1934)

Necessitas dat legem non ipsa accipit.

Necessity gives the law without itself acknowledging one.

‘Sententiae’ no. 444, in J. W. and A. M. Duff ‘Minor Latin Poets’ (Loeb ed., 1934); proverbially Necessitas non habet legem Necessity has no law

4.107 John Pudney 1909-77

Do not despair

For Johnny-head-in-air; He sleeps as sound

As Johnny underground.

Fetch out no shroud

For Johnny-in-the-cloud;

And keep your tears

For him in after years.

Better by far

For Johnny-the-bright-star,

To keep your head,

And see his children fed.

‘For Johnny’ (1942)

4.108 William Pulteney, Earl of Bath 1684-1764

For Sir Ph—p well knows That innuendoes

Will serve him no longer in verse or in prose, Since twelve honest men have decided the cause, And were judges of fact, tho’ not judges of laws.

‘The Honest Jury’ (1729) st. 3 (on Sir Philip Yorke’s unsuccessful prosecution of ‘The Craftsman’ in 1729)

4.109 Punch 1841—

Advice to persons about to marry.—’Don’t.’ You pays your money and you takes your choice. The Half-Way House to Rome, Oxford.

What is better than presence of mind in a railway accident? Absence of body. Never do to-day what you can put off till to-morrow.

Who’s ’im, Bill? A stranger! ’Eave ’arf a brick at ’im.

What is Matter?—Never mind. What is Mind?—No matter.

It ain’t the ’unting as ’urts ’im, it’s the ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer along the ’ard ’igh road. Mun, a had na’ been the-erre abune two hours when—bang—went saxpence!!!

Cats is ‘dogs’ and rabbits is ‘dogs’ and so’s Parrats, but this ’ere ‘Tortis’ is a insect, and there ain’t no charge for it.

Nothink for nothink ’ere, and precious little for sixpence.

Sure, the next train has gone ten minutes ago.

It appears the Americans have taken umbrage. The deuce they have! Whereabouts is that? Go directly—see what she’s doing, and tell her she mustn’t.

There was one poor tiger that hadn’t got a Christian.

vol. 68, p. 143 (1875)

There was an old owl lived in an oak The more he heard, the less he spoke; The less he spoke, the more he heard O, if men were all like that wise bird!

vol. 68, p. 155 (1875)

It’s worse than wicked, my dear, it’s vulgar.

Almanac (1876)

I never read books—I write them.

vol. 74, p. 210 (1878).

I am not hungry; but thank goodness, I am greedy.

vol. 75, p. 290 (1878)

Bishop: Who is it that sees and hears all we do, and before whom even I am but as a crushed worm?

Page: The Missus, my Lord.

vol. 79, p. 63 (1880)

Ah whiles hae ma doobts aboot the meenister.

vol. 79, p. 275 (1880)

What sort of a doctor is he?

Oh, well, I don’t know very much about his ability; but he’s got a very good bedside manner!

vol. 86, p. 121 (1884)

I used your soap two years ago; since then I have used no other.

vol. 86, p. 197 (1884)

Don’t look at me, Sir, with—ah—in that tone of voice.

vol. 87, p. 38 (1884)

Wife of two years’ standing: Oh yes! I’m sure he’s not so fond of me as at first. He’s away so much, neglects me dreadfully, and he’s so cross when he comes home. What shall I do?

Widow: Feed the brute!

vol. 89, p. 206 (1885)

Nearly all our best men are dead! Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, George Eliot!—I’m not feeling very well myself.

vol. 104, p. 210 (1893)

Botticelli isn’t a wine, you Juggins! Botticelli’s a cheese!

vol. 106, p. 270 (1894)

I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.

Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!

vol. 109, p. 222 (1895)

Look here, Steward, if this is coffee, I want tea; but if this is tea, then I wish for coffee.

vol. 123, p. 44 (1902)

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and then again I just sits.

vol. 131, p. 297 (1906)