The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘American Restaurant Magazine’ June 1958, referring to Kentucky Fried Chicken
It’s that man again...! At the head of a cavalcade of seven black motor cars Hitler swept out of
his Berlin Chancellery last night on a mystery journey.
Headline in ‘Daily Express’ 2 May 1939 (the acronym ITMA became the title of a BBC radio show, from
September 1939)
It will play in Peoria.
In ‘New York Times’ 9 June 1973 (catch-phrase of the Nixon administration)
Jaques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris.
Title of musical entertainment (1968-72), which spawned numerous imitations of the phrase ‘alive and well
and living in...’
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.
Advertising copy for ‘Jaws 2’ (1978 film)
The King over the Water.
Jacobite toast (18th century)
King’s Moll Reno’d in Wolsey’s Home Town.
American newspaper headline referring to Wallis Simpson’s divorce proceedings in Ipswich, in Frances
Donaldson ‘Edward VIII’ (1974) ch. 7
LBJ, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?
Anti-Vietnam marching slogan, in Jacquin Sanders ‘The Draft and the Vietnam War’ (1966) ch. 3
Let’s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
Line coined in 1920s by press agent for Robert Benchley (and often attributed to Benchley), in Howard
Teichmann ‘Smart Alec’ (1976) ch. 9; subsequently adopted in a similar form, by Mae West in Every Day’s a
Holiday (1937 film)
Liberty is always unfinished business.
Title of 36th Annual Report of the American Civil Liberties Union, 1 July 1955-30 June 1956
Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
Graffiti found on the London Underground, in D. J. Enright (ed.) ‘Faber Book of Fevers and Frets’ (1989)
Like a fine old English gentleman,
All of the olden time.
‘The Fine Old English Gentleman’ (traditional song)
Like Caesar’s wife, all things to all men.
Impartiality, as described by a newly-elected mayor, in G. W. E. Russell ‘Collections and
Recollections’ (1898) ch. 30
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one!
Popular rhyme in circulation after the acquittal of Lizzie Borden from the charge of murdering her father and
stepmother on 4 August 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts
Lloyd George knows my father,
My father knows Lloyd George.