The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses Heads Were toward Eternity.

‘Because I could not stop for Death’ (c.1863)

The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth—

The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity.

‘The Bustle in a House’ (c.1866)

What fortitude the Soul contains, That it can so endure

The accent of a coming Foot— The opening of a Door.

‘Elysium is as far as to’ (c.1882)

There interposed a Fly—

With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz— Between the light—and me—

And then the Windows failed—and then I could not see to see.

‘I heard a Fly buzz—when I died’ (c.1862)

My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befel. Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

‘My life closed twice before its close’

The Soul selects her own Society— Then—shuts the Door—

To her divine Majority— Present no more.

‘The Soul selects her own Society’ (c.1862)

I’ve known her—from an ample nation—

Choose One—

Then—close the Valves of her attention— Like Stone.

‘The Soul selects her own Society’ (c.1862)

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

‘Success is counted sweetest’ (1859)

There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons—

That oppresses like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes—

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us— We can find no scar,

But internal difference,

Where the Meanings, are.

‘There’s a certain Slant of light’ (c.1861)

This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies And Lads and Girls—

Was laughter and ability and Sighing And Frocks and Curls.

‘This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies’ (c.1864)

What Soft—Cherubic Creatures— These Gentlewomen are—

One would as soon assault a Plush— Or violate a Star—

Such Dimity Convictions— A Horror so refined

Of freckled Human Nature—

Of Deity—ashamed.

‘What Soft—Cherubic Creatures’ (c.1862)

Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A Circus passed the house—still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. The Lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear to-day for the first time the river in the tree.

Letter to Mrs J. G. Holland, 1866, in R. N. Linscott (ed.) ‘Selected Letters and Poems of Emily Dickinson’ (1959)

This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me,—

The simple news that Nature told,

With tender majesty.

Her message is committed

To hands I cannot see;

For love of her sweet countrymen

Judge tenderly of me.

In R. N. Linscott (ed.) ‘Selected Letters and Poems of Emily Dickinson’ (1959)

4.54 Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson 1862-1932

Dissatisfaction with the world in which we live and determination to realize one that shall be better, are the prevailing characteristics of the modern spirit.

‘The Greek View of Life’ (1898) ch. 5

4.55 John Dickinson 1732-1808

We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery...

Our cause is just, our union is perfect.

Declaration of reasons for taking up arms against England, presented to Congress, 8 July 1775, in C. J. Stillè ‘The Life and Times of John Dickinson’ (1891) ch. 5

Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all,— By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.

‘The Liberty Song’ (1768), in ‘The Writings of John Dickinson’ vol. 1 (1895) p. 421

4.56 Paul Dickson 1939—

Rowe’s Rule: the odds are five to six that the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.

‘Washingtonian’ November 1978.

4.57 Denis Diderot 1713-84

L’esprit de l’escalier.

Staircase wit.

The witty riposte one thinks of only when one has left the drawing-room and is already on the way downstairs, in ‘Paradoxe sur le Comèdien’ (written 1773-8, published 1830)

Voyez-vous cet oeuf. C’est avec cela qu’on renverse toutes les ècoles de thèologie, et tous les temples de la terre.

See this egg. It is with this that all the schools of theology and all the temples of the earth are

to be overturned.

‘Le Rêve de d’Alembert’ (written 1769, published 1830) pt. 1

4.58 Joan Didion 1934—

Was there ever in anyone’s life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

‘Run River’ (1963) ch. 4

Plutarch ‘Parallel Lives’ ‘Alexander’ ch. 14, sect. 4 (translated by T. North, 1579)

4.63 Dionysius of Halicarnassus fl. 30-7 B.C.

History is philosophy from examples.

‘Ars Rhetorica’ ch. 11, sect. 2

4.64 Benjamin Disraeli (First Earl of Beaconsfield) 1804-81

Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.

Maiden speech in the House of Commons, ‘Hansard’ 7 December 1837

The Continent will not suffer England to be the workshop of the world.

‘Hansard’ 15 March 1838

Thus you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question.

‘Hansard’ 16 February 1844

The noble Lord is the Rupert of Parliamentary discussion.

‘Hansard’ 24 April 1844 (referring to Lord Stanley).

The right hon. Gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes.

‘Hansard’ 28 February 1845 (referring to Sir Robert Peel)

Protection is not a principle, but an expedient.

‘Hansard’ 17 March 1845

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

‘Hansard’ 17 March 1845, col. 1028. Bagehot, quoting Disraeli in ‘The English Constitution’ (1867) ‘The House of Lords’, elaborated on the theme with the words ‘so much did the ideas of its “head” differ from the sensations of its “tail”.’

He traces the steam-engine always back to the tea-kettle.

‘Hansard’ 11 April 1845, col. 558 (Sir Robert Peel)

Justice is truth in action.

‘Hansard’ 11 February 1851

I read this morning an awful, though monotonous, manifesto in the great organ of public opinion, which always makes me tremble: Olympian bolts; and yet I could not help fancying amid their rumbling terrors I heard the plaintive treble of the Treasury Bench.

‘Hansard’ 13 February 1851

He has to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective.

‘Hansard’ 16 December 1852, col. 1653 (Sir Charles Wood)

England does not love coalitions.

‘Hansard’ 16 December 1852

Finality is not the language of politics.

‘Hansard’ 28 February 1859

It is, I say, in the noble Lord’s power to come to some really cordial understanding...between this country and France...and to put an end to these bloated armaments which only involve states

in financial embarrassment.

‘Hansard’ 8 May 1862, col. 1425

He seems to think that posterity is a pack-horse, always ready to be loaded. Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

You are not going, I hope, to leave the destinies of the British Empire to prigs and pedants.

I hold that the characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.

Speech at Oxford, 25 November 1864, in ‘The Times’ 26 November 1864

Man, my Lord, is a being born to believe.

Speech at Oxford, 25 November 1864, in ‘The Times’ 26 November 1864

Party is organized opinion.

Speech at Oxford, 25 November 1864, in ‘The Times’ 26 November 1864

Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.

Speech at Oxford, 25 November 1864, in ‘The Times’ 26 November 1864

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

‘Hansard’ 1 May 1865, col. 1246

I had to prepare the mind of the country, and...to educate our party.

Speech at Edinburgh, 29 October 1867, in ‘The Times’ 30 October 1867

Change is inevitable in a progressive country. Change is constant.

Speech at Edinburgh, 29 October 1867, in ‘The Times’ 30 October 1867

We have legalized confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, and condoned high treason.

‘Hansard’ 27 February 1871

I believe that without party Parliamentary government is impossible.

Speech at Manchester, 3 April 1872, in ‘The Times’ 4 April 1872

You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes.

Speaking of the Treasury Bench at Manchester, 3 April 1872, in ‘The Times’ 4 April 1872.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Speech at Manchester, 3 April 1872, in ‘The Times’ 4 April 1872

A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

‘Hansard’ 11 March 1873, col. 1814

An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

At a banquet given by Glasgow on his installation as Lord Rector, 19 November 1873, in ‘The Times’ 20 November 1873

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

‘Hansard’ 15 June 1874, col. 1618

He is a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers.

‘Hansard’ 5 August 1874, col. 1358 (on the Marquis of Salisbury)

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

Speech, 24 July 1877

Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own.

Speech at Guildhall, 9 November 1877, in ‘The Times’ 10 November 1877.

Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace—but a peace I hope with honour.

‘Hansard’ 16 July 1878.

A series of congratulatory regrets.

Referring to Lord Harrington’s Resolution on the Berlin Treaty in a speech at a banquet in The Duke of Wellington’s Riding School, Knightsbridge, 27 July 1878: ‘The Times’ 29 July 1878

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.

Referring to Gladstone in a speech at a banquet in The Duke of Wellington’s Riding School, Knightsbridge, 27 July 1878: ‘The Times’ 29 July 1878

I admit that there is gossip...that the government of the world is carried on by sovereigns and statesmen, and not by anonymous paragraph writers...or by the hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity.

Speech at Guildhall, London, 9 November 1878, in ‘The Times’ 11 November 1878

The key of India is London.

‘Hansard’ 4 March 1881, col. 299

In the ‘Town’ yesterday, I am told ‘some one asked Disraeli, in offering himself for Marylebone, on what he intended to stand. “On my head,” was the reply.’

Letter, 8 April 1833, in ‘Lord Beaconsfield’s Correspondence with his Sister 1832-1852’ (1886) p. 18

There can be no economy where there is no efficiency.

Address to his Constituents, 1 October 1868, in ‘The Times’ 3 October 1868

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 2, ch. 1

A government of statesmen or of clerks? Of Humbug or Humdrum?

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 2, ch. 4

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 2, ch. 5

‘A sound Conservative government,’ said Taper, musingly. ‘I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.’

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 2, ch. 6

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 3, ch. 1

It seems to me a barren thing this Conservatism—an unhappy cross-breed, the mule of politics that engenders nothing.

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 3, ch. 5

The depositary of power is always unpopular.

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 4, ch. 13

Where can we find faith in a nation of sectaries?

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 4, ch. 13

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.

‘Coningsby’ (1844) bk. 4, ch. 13

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

‘Contarini Fleming’ (1832) pt. 1, ch. 23.

The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word—dissimulation.

‘Contarini Fleming’ (1832) pt. 5, ch. 10

His Christianity was muscular.

‘Endymion’ (1880) ch.14

The sweet simplicity of the three per cents.

‘Endymion’ (1880) ch. 91.

I believe they went out, like all good things, with the Stuarts.

‘Endymion’ (1880) ch. 99

Time is the great physician.

‘Henrietta Temple’ (1837) bk. 6, ch. 9

They mean well; their feelings are strong, but their hearts are in the right place.

‘The Infernal Marriage’ (1832) pt. 1, 1 (on the Furies)

The blue ribbon of the turf.

‘Lord George Bentinck’ (1852) ch. 26 (on the Derby)

Every day when he looked into the glass, and gave the last touch to his consummate toilette, he offered his grateful thanks to Providence that his family was not unworthy of him.

‘Lothair’ (1870) ch. 1

A Protestant, if he wants aid or advice on any matter, can only go to his solicitor.

‘Lothair’ (1870) ch. 27

London; a nation, not a city.

‘Lothair’ (1870) ch. 27

The gondola of London.

‘Lothair’ (1870) ch. 27 (a hansom cab)

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

‘Lothair’ (1870) ch. 28

You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.

‘Lothair’ (1870) ch. 35.

To do nothing and get something, formed a boy’s ideal of a manly career.

‘Sybil’ (1845) bk. 1, ch. 5

‘Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or

inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.’

‘You speak of—’ said Egremont, hesitatingly, ‘the rich and the poor.’

‘Sybil’ (1845) bk. 2, ch. 5

Mr Kremlin himself was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea,—and that was wrong.

‘Sybil’ (1845) bk. 4, ch. 5.

I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations.

‘Sybil’ (1845) bk. 4, ch. 8

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.

‘Sybil’ (1845) bk. 6, ch. 13

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

‘Tancred’ (1847) bk. 2, ch. 13

A majority is always the best repartee.

‘Tancred’ (1847) bk. 2, ch. 14

The East is a career.

‘Tancred’ (1847) bk. 2, ch. 14

London is a modern Babylon.

‘Tancred’ (1847) bk. 5, ch. 5

Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books.

‘Vivian Grey’ (1826) bk. 5, ch. 1

I repeat...that all power is a trust—that we are accountable for its exercise—that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist.

‘Vivian Grey’ (1826) bk. 6, ch. 7

All Paradise opens! Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music!

‘The Young Duke’ (1831) bk. 1, ch. 10

‘The age of chivalry is past,’ said May Dacre. ‘Bores have succeeded to dragons.’

‘The Young Duke’ (1831) bk. 2, ch. 5

We came here for fame.

To John Bright, in the House of Commons, in Robert Blake ‘Disraeli’ (1966) ch. 4

The school of Manchester.

Describing the free trade politics of Cobden and Bright, in Robert Blake ‘Disraeli’ (1966) ch. 10

I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.

Said while correcting proofs of his last Parliamentary speech, 31 March 1881, in Robert Blake ‘Disraeli’ (1966) ch. 32

Take away that emblem of mortality.

On being offered an air cushion to sit on, 1881, in Robert Blake ‘Disraeli’ (1966) ch. 32

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.

Attributed to Disraeli and believed to have been said to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in E. Latham ‘Famous

Sayings and their Authors’ (1904) p. 11

I never deny; I never contradict; I sometimes forget.

Said to Lord Esher of his relations with Queen Victoria, in Elizabeth Longford ‘Victoria R. I’ (1964) ch. 27

Protection is not only dead, but damned.

In W. Monypenny and G. Buckle ‘The Life of Benjamin Disraeli’ vol. 3 (1914) ch. 8

Pray remember, Mr Dean, no dogma, no Dean.

In W. Monypenny and G. Buckle ‘The Life of Benjamin Disraeli’ vol. 4 (1916) ch. 10

I am dead; dead, but in the Elysian fields.

To a peer, on his elevation to the House of Lords, in W. Monypenny and G. Buckle ‘The Life of Benjamin Disraeli’ vol. 5 (1920) ch. 13

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

In W. Monypenny and G. Buckle ‘The Life of Benjamin Disraeli’ vol. 6 (1920) ch. 17.

Never complain and never explain.

In J. Morley ‘The Life of William Ewart Gladstone’ (1903) vol. 1, p. 123.

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

To Matthew Arnold, in G. W. E. Russell ‘Collections and Recollections’ (1898) ch. 23

Coffee house babble.

On the Bulgarian Atrocities, 1876, in R. W. Seton Watson ‘Britain in Europe 1789-1914’ (1955) p. 515

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

Attributed to Disraeli by Mark Twain in his ‘Autobiography’ (1924) vol. 1, p. 246

No it is better not. She would only ask me to take a message to Albert.

On his death-bed, declining a proposed visit from Queen Victoria, in Robert Blake ‘Disraeli’ (1966 ch. 32

4.65 Isaac D’Israeli 1766-1848

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

‘Curiosities of Literature’ (9th ed., 1834) ‘On Quotation’

He wreathed the rod of criticism with roses.

‘Curiosities of Literature’ (9th ed., 1834) vol. 1, p. 20 (on Pierre Bayle)

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

‘The Literary Character’ (1795) ch. 11

4.66 Austin Dobson (Henry Austin Dobson) 1840-1921

All passes. Art alone Enduring stays to us;

The Bust outlasts the throne,— The Coin, Tiberius.

‘Ars Victrix’

Fame is a food that dead men eat,— I have no stomach for such meat.

‘Fame is a Food’ (1906)