The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

‘A Sentimental Journey’ (1768) ‘In the Street. Calais’

If I ever do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.

‘A Sentimental Journey’ (1768) ‘Montriul’

Vive l’amour! et vive la bagatelle!

‘A Sentimental Journey’ (1768) ‘The letter’

Hail, ye small sweet courtesies of life.

‘A Sentimental Journey’ (1768) ‘The Pulse. Paris’

There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.

‘A Sentimental Journey’ (1768) ‘The Pulse. Paris’

God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

‘A Sentimental Journey’ (1768) ‘Maria’ (derived from a French proverb, but familiar in this form of words)

Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows!

‘A Sentimental Journey’ (1768) ‘The Bourbonnois’

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 1, opening words

‘Pray, my dear,’ quoth my mother, ‘have you not forgot to wind up the clock?’—’Good G—!’ cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time, —’Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?’

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 1

As we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do anything,—only keep your temper.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 6

Have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself,—have they not had their Hobby-Horses...and so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 7

He was in a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 12

’Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,—and of obstinacy in a bad one.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 17

What is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 21

My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of Lillabullero.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 21

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;—they are the life, the soul of reading;—take them out of this book for instance,—you might as well take the book along with them.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 22

I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must smell too strong of the lamp.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 23

Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 11

‘I’ll not hurt thee,’ says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,—’I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:—Go,’ says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—’go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?—This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.’

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 12

Whenever a man talks loudly against religion,—always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions which have got the better of his creed.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 17

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 2, ch. 19

‘Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,’ cried my uncle Toby,—’but nothing to this.’

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 3, ch. 11

The corregiescity of Corregio.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 3, ch. 12.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world,—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst,—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 3, ch. 12

Is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of Pensions and Grenadiers?

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 4, ch. 5

True Shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 4, ch. 32

‘There is no terror, brother Toby, in its [death’s] looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions—and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man’s room—Strip it of these, what is it?’—’’Tis better in battle than in bed’, said my uncle Toby.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 5, ch. 3

There is a North-west passage to the intellectual World.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 5, ch. 42

‘The poor soul will die:—’ ‘He shall not die, by G—’, cried my uncle Toby.—The Accusing Spirit, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in;—and the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 6, ch. 8

To say a man is fallen in love,—or that he is deeply in love,—or up to the ears in love,—and sometimes even over head and ears in it,—carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:—this is recurring again to Plato’s opinion, which, with all his divinityship, —I hold to be damnable and heretical:—and so much for that. Let love therefore be what it will, —my uncle Toby fell into it.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 6, ch. 37

My brother Toby, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs Wadman.

Then he will never, quoth my father, lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 6, ch. 39

Now hang it! quoth I, as I look’d towards the French coast—a man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 7, ch. 2

‘A soldier,’ cried my Uncle Toby, interrupting the corporal, ‘is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters.’—’But not so often, an’ please your honour,’ replied the corporal.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 8, ch. 19

Everything presses on—whilst thou art twisting that lock,—see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 9, ch. 10

—d! said my mother, ‘what is all this story about?’ —’A Cock and a Bull,’ said Yorick.

‘Tristram Shandy’ (1759-67) bk. 9, ch. 33

This sad vicissitude of things.

‘Sermons’ no. 16

7.169 Wallace Stevens 1879-1955

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

‘Adagia’ (1957)

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

‘Anecdote of the Jar’ (1923)

The prologues are over. It is a question, now Of final belief, So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.

‘Asides on the Oboe’

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

‘Bantams in Pine Woods’ (1923)

Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots, Catches tigers

In red weather.

‘Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock’ (1923)

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’ (1923)

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.

Title of poem (1923)

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.

‘A High-Toned old Christian Woman’ (1923)

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramón, The maker’s rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly starred, And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ (1936)

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne. We shall return at twilight from the lecture Pleased that the irrational is rational.

‘It must give Pleasure’ (1942)

The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,

You do not play things as they are.’

The man replied, ‘Things as they are

Are changed upon the blue guitar.’

‘The Man with the Blue Guitar’ (1937)

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village,

Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages,

Or one man

Crossing a single bridge into a village.

‘Metaphors of a Magnifico’ (1923)

The inconceivable idea of the sun.

You must become an ignorant man again And see the sun again with an ignorant eye

And see it clearly in the idea of it.

‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction’ (1947) ‘It Must Be Abstract’ no. 1

The palm at the end of the mind, Beyond the last thought, rises...

A gold-feathered bird Sings in the palm.

‘Of Mere Being’ (1957)

We keep coming back and coming back

To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns That fall upon it out of the wind.

‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven’ (1950) no. 9

A more severe,

More harassing master would extemporize Subtler, more urgent proof that the theory Of poetry is the theory of life,

As it is, in the intricate evasions of as,

In things seen and unseen, created from nothingness, The heavens, the hells, the worlds,the longed-for lands.

‘An Ordinary Evening in New Haven’ (1950) no. 28

Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

Is music.

‘Peter Quince at the Clavier’ (1923) pt. 1

Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal;

But in the flesh it is immortal.

Television broadcast, 30 March 1952, in N. F. Busch ‘Adlai E. Stevenson’ (1952) ch. 5

If they [the Republicans] will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

Speech during 1952 presidential campaign, in J. B. Martin ‘Adlai Stevenson and Illinois’ (1976) ch. 8

Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains.

Speech of Acceptance at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, 26 July 1952, in ‘Speeches of Adlai Stevenson’ (1952) p. 20

A hungry man is not a free man.

Speech at Kasson, Minnesota, 6 September 1952, in ‘Speeches of Adlai Stevenson’ (1952) ‘Farm Policy’

There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.

Speech at Hartford, Connecticut, 18 September 1952, in ‘Speeches of Adlai Stevenson’ (1952) ‘The Atomic Future’

In America any boy may become President.

Speech in Indianapolis, 26 September 1952, in ‘Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E. Stevenson; 1952’ (1953) p. 174

A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

Speech in Detroit, 7 October 1952, in ‘Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E. Stevenson; 1952’ (1953) p. 218

The Republican party did not have to accept the voice of the Senator from Wisconsin nor encourage the excesses of its Vice-Presidential nominee [Richard Nixon]—the young man who asks you to set him one heart-beat from the Presidency of the United States.

Speech at Cleveland, Ohio, 23 October 1952, in ‘New York Times’ 24 October 1952, p. 14 (commonly quoted: ‘just a heart-beat away...’

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House.

Speech in Washington, 13 December 1952, following his defeat in the Presidential election, in Alden Whitman ‘Portrait: Adlai E. Stevenson’ (1965) ch. 1

We hear the Secretary of State [John Foster Dulles] boasting of his brinkmanship—the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.

Speech in Hartford, Connecticut, 25 February 1956, in ‘New York Times’ 26 February 1956, p. 64

She [Eleanor Roosevelt] would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

On learning of Mrs Roosevelt’s death, in ‘New York Times’ 8 November 1962

7.171 Anne Stevenson 1933—

Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

‘Green Mountain, Black Mountain’ (1982)

7.172 Robert Louis Stevenson 1850-94

The harmless art of knucklebones has seen the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of the United States.

‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘The Lantern-Bearers’ pt. 1

The bright face of danger.

‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘The Lantern-Bearers’ pt. 4

Every one lives by selling something.

‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘Beggars’ pt. 3

A mortified appetite is never a wise companion.

‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘A Christmas Sermon’ pt. 1

Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much:—surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be ashamed.

‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘A Christmas Sermon’ pt. 4

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

‘Familiar Studies of Men and Books’ (1882) ‘Yoshida-Torajiro’

Am I no a bonny fighter?

‘Kidnapped’ (1886) ch. 10

I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David.

‘Kidnapped’ (1886) ch. 18

I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann.

‘Memories and Portraits’ (1887) ch. 4 ‘A College Magazine’

He who was prepared to help the escaping murderer or to embrace the impenitent thief, found, to the overthrow of all his logic, that he objected to the use of dynamite.

‘More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter’ (1885) ‘The Superfluous Mansion’

These are my politics: to change what we can; to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions; and for no word however sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.

‘More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter’ (1885) ‘Epilogue of the Cigar Divan’

The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.

‘The New Arabian Nights’ (1882) ‘The Suicide Club: Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts’

I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.

‘The New Arabian Nights’ (1882) ‘The Rajah’s Diamond: Story of the Bandbox’

The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.

‘On some technical Elements of Style in Literature’ (1885)

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

‘Travels with a Donkey’ (1879) ‘Cheylard and Luc’

I own I like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, I should go the length of twopence every day of my life.

‘Travels with a Donkey’ (1879) ‘Father Apollinaris’

A faddling hedonist.

‘Travels with a Donkey’ (1879) ‘The Boarders’

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

‘Treasure Island’ (1883) ch. 1

Tip me the black spot.

‘Treasure Island’ (1883) ch. 3

Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese—toasted, mostly.

‘Treasure Island’ (1883) ch. 15

Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Aes Triplex’

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘An Apology for Idlers’

He sows hurry and reaps indigestion.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘An Apology for Idlers’

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Crabbed Age and Youth’

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘El Dorado’

In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1’

Even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1’

A little amateur painting in water-colours shows the innocent and quiet mind.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1’

Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1’

Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1’

Marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (1881) ‘Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1’

To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good.