The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
.pdfThou wretched fraction, wilt thou be the ninth part even of a tailor?
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Francia’
What is all knowledge too but recorded experience, and a product of history; of which, therefore, reasoning and belief, no less than action and passion, are essential materials?
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘On History’
History is the essence of innumerable biographies.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘On History’.
A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Jean Paul Friedrich Richter’
There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Sir Walter Scott’
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Sir Walter Scott’.
To the very last he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of La carriére ouverte aux talents, The tools to him that can handle them.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Sir Walter Scott’ (La carriére... Career open to the talents)
It can be said of him, when he departed, he took a man’s life along with him.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Sir Walter Scott’
This idle habit of ‘accounting for the moral sense’...The moral sense, thank God, is a thing you will never ‘account for’...By no greatest happiness principle, greatest nobleness principle, or any principle whatever, will you make that in the least clearer than it already is.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Shooting Niagara: and After?’
It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Signs of the Times’
The Bible-Society...is found, on inquiry, to be...a machine for converting the Heathen.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Signs of the Times’
Thought, he [Dr Cabanis] is inclined to hold, is still secreted by the brain; but then Poetry and Religion (and it is really worth knowing) are ‘a product of the smaller intestines’!
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘Signs of the Times’
The three great elements of modern civilization, Gunpowder, Printing, and the Protestant Religion.
‘Critical and Miscellaneous Essays’ (1838) ‘The State of German Literature’.
‘Genius’ (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).
‘History of Frederick the Great’ (1858) bk. 4, ch. 3.
Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books!
‘History of Frederick the Great’ (1858) bk. 16, ch. 1.
A whiff of grapeshot.
‘History of the French Revolution’ (1837) vol. 1, bk. 5, ch. 3
History a distillation of rumour.
‘History of the French Revolution’ (1837) vol. 1, bk. 7, ch. 5
The difference between Orthodoxy or My-doxy and Heterodoxy or Thy-doxy.
‘History of the French Revolution’ (1837) vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 2
The seagreen Incorruptible.
Referring to Robespierre, in ‘History of the French Revolution’ (1837) vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 4
France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams.
‘History of the French Revolution’ (1837) vol. 3, bk. 7, ch. 7
Aristocracy of the Moneybag.
‘History of the French Revolution’ (1837) vol. 3, bk. 7, ch. 7
Worship is transcendent wonder.
‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic’ (1841) ‘The Hero as Divinity’
In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.
‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic’ (1841) ‘The Hero as Man of Letters’
The true University of these days is a collection of books.
‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic’ (1841) ‘The Hero as Man of Letters’
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic’ (1841) ‘The Hero as Man of Letters’
I hope we English will long maintain our grand talent pour le silence.
‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic’ (1841) ‘The Hero as King’
Maid-servants, I hear people complaining, are getting instructed in the ‘ologies’.
‘Inaugural Address at Edinburgh’, 2 April 1866, on being installed as Rector of the University
A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions mostly fools.
‘Latter-Day Pamphlets’ (1850) ‘Parliaments’.
The Dismal Science.
On political economy in ‘Latter-Day Pamphlets’ (1850) ‘The Present Time’
Little other than a redtape talking-machine, and unhappy bag of parliamentary eloquence.
Describing himself, in ‘Latter-Day Pamphlets’ (1850) ‘The Present Time’
Transcendental moonshine.
‘The Life of John Sterling’ (1851) pt. 1, ch. 15
Captains of industry.
‘Past and Present’ (1843) bk. 4, ch. 4 (title)
He who first shortened the labour of copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 1, ch. 5
Man is a tool-using animal...Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 1, ch. 5
Whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,—to the length of sixpence.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 1, ch. 5
Language is called the garment of thought: however, it should rather be, language is the fleshgarment, the body, of thought.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 1, ch. 11
The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 2, ch. 6
The everlasting No.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 2, ch. 7 (title)
Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 2, ch. 9
Be no longer a chaos, but a world, or even worldkin. Produce! Produce!
Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it in God’s name! ’Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then.
‘Sartor Resartus’ (1834) bk. 2, ch. 9
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
Speech in support of the London Library, 24 June 1840, in F. Harrison ‘Carlyle and the London Library’ (1907) p. 66
‘Gad! she’d better!’
On hearing that Margaret Fuller ‘accept [ed] the universe’, in William James ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ (1902) lecture 2, p. 41
Macaulay is well for a while, but one wouldn’t live under Niagara.
In R. M. Milnes ‘Notebook’ (1838) p. 157
If Jesus Christ were to come to-day, people would not even crucify him.
They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
In D. A. Wilson ‘Carlyle at his Zenith’ (1927) p. 238
3.34 Andrew Carnegie 1835-1919
The man who dies...rich dies disgraced.
‘North American Review’ June 1889 ‘Wealth’
3.35 Dale Carnegie 1888-1955
How to win friends and influence people.
Title of book (1936)
3.36 Julia A. Carney 1823-1908
Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the beauteous land.
‘Little Things’ (1845)
3.37 Joseph Edwards Carpenter 1813-85
What are the wild waves saying Sister, the whole day long, That ever amid our playing,
I hear but their low lone song?
‘What are the Wild Waves Saying?’ (1854)
3.38 J. L. Carr
You have not had thirty years’ experience...You have had one year’s experience 30 times.
‘The Harpole Report’ (1972) p. 128
3.39 Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1832-98
‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 1
‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice.
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 2
How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale!
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 2.
How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in With gently smiling jaws!
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 2
‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ said cunning old Fury; ‘I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 3
‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said, ‘And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head— Do you think, at your age, it is right?’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 5.
‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’
Said his father; ‘don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 5.
Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes; He only does it to annoy, Because he knows it teases.
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 6
‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on. ‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’ ‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. ‘Why, you might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see!”’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 7
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you’re at! Up above the world you fly! Like a teatray in the sky.
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 7.
‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. ‘I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’ ‘You mean you can’t take less,’ said the Hatter: ‘it’s very easy to take more than nothing.’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 7
Everything’s got a moral, if you can only find it.
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 9
Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 9.
‘That’s nothing to what I could say if I chose,’ the Duchess replied.
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 9
‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: ‘because they lessen from day to day.’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 9
‘Will you walk a little faster?’ said a whiting to a snail,
‘There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 10
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 10
‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 12
No! No! Sentence first—verdict afterwards.
‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) ch. 12
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 1
And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 1
Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 2
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 2
Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 2
If you think we’re wax-works, you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren’t made to be looked at for nothing. Nohow!
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 4
‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 4
The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand:
‘If this were only cleared away,’ They said, ‘it would be grand!’
‘If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said, ‘That they could get it clear?’
‘I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 4
‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings.’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 4
But answer came there none— And this was scarcely odd because They’d eaten every one.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 4.
‘You know,’ he said very gravely, ‘it’s one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle—to get one’s head cut off.’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 4
The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 5
‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ the Queen remarked.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 5
Consider anything, only don’t cry!
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 5
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 5
With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 6
They gave it me,—for an un-birthday present.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 6
‘There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
‘I meant, “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I
choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 6
You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 6
‘I can repeat poetry as well as other folk if it comes to that—’ ‘Oh, it needn’t come to that!’ Alice hastily said.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 6
The little fishes of the sea, They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes’ answer was
‘We cannot do it, Sir, because—’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 6
He’s an Anglo-Saxon Messenger—and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 7
The other Messenger’s called Hatta. I must have two you know—to come and go. One to come, and one to go.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 7
‘There’s nothing like eating hay when you’re faint.’...’I didn’t say there was nothing better,’ the King replied, ‘I said there was nothing like it.’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 7
‘I’m sure nobody walks much faster than I do!’ ‘He can’t do that,’ said the King, ‘or else he’d have been here first.’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 7
It’s as large as life, and twice as natural!
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 7
I’ll tell thee everything I can: There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged, aged man, A-sitting on a gate.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 8
He said, ‘I look for butterflies That sleep among the wheat: I make them into mutton-pies, And sell them in the street.’
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 8
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot Into a left-hand shoe.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 8
No admittance till the week after next!
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 9
It isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to. Remove the joint.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 9
Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle.
‘Through the Looking-Glass’ (1872) ch. 9
He would answer to ‘Hi!’ or to any loud cry, Such as ‘Fry me!’ or ‘Fritter-my-wig!’
‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (1876) ‘Fit the First: The Landing’
His intimate friends called him ‘Candle-ends’, And his enemies, ‘Toasted-cheese’.
‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (1876) ‘Fit the First: The Landing’
But the principal failing occurred in the sailing, And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East, That the ship would not travel due West!
‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (1876) ‘Fit the Second: The Bellman’s Speech’
But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day, If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away, And never be met with again!
‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (1876) ‘Fit the Third: The Baker’s Tale’
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap.
‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (1876) ‘Fit the Fifth: The Beaver’s Lesson’
I never loved a dear Gazelle— Nor anything that cost me much: High prices profit those who sell, But why should I be fond of such?
‘Phantasmagoria’ (1869) ‘Theme with Variations’.
He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife.
‘At length I realize,’ he said, ‘The bitterness of life!’
‘Sylvie and Bruno’ (1889) ch. 5
He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek, He looked again and found it was
The Middle of Next Week. ‘The one thing I regret,’ he said, ‘Is that it cannot speak!’
‘Sylvie and Bruno’ (1889) ch. 6
3.40 William Herbert Carruth 1859-1924
Some call it evolution, And others call it God.
‘Each In His Own Tongue, and Other Poems’ (1908).
3.41 Edward Carson (Baron Carson) 1854-1935
My only great qualification for being put at the head of the Navy is that I am very much at sea.
In Ian Colvin ‘Life of Lord Carson’ (1936) vol. 3, ch. 23
3.42 Henry Carter d. 1806
From distant climes, o’er widespread seas we come, Though not with much èclat or beat of drum;
True patriots we; for be it understood,
We left our country for our country’s good. No private views disgraced our generous zeal, What urged our travels was our country’s weal; And none will doubt but that our emigration Has proved most useful to the British nation.
Prologue, written for, but not recited at, the opening of the Playhouse, Sydney, New South Wales, 16 January 1796, when the actors were principally convicts. A. W. Jose and H. J. Carter (eds.) ‘The Australian Encyclopaedia’ (1927) p. 139. Previously attributed to George Barrington (b. 1755).
3.43 Sydney Carter 1915—
It’s God they ought to crucify Instead of you and me,
I said to the carpenter A-hanging on the tree.
‘Friday Morning’ (1967)
I danced in the morning When the world was begun And I danced in the moon And the stars and the sun
And I came down from heaven And I danced on the earth— At Bethlehem I had my birth.