The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

2.13 Emperor Nero A.D. 37-68
Qualis artifex pereo!
What an artist dies with me!
In Suetonius ‘Lives of the Caesars’ ‘Nero’ sect. 49
2.14 Gèrard de Nerval 1808-55
Dieu est mort! le ciel est vide—
Pleurez! enfants, vous n’avez plus de pére.
God is dead! Heaven is empty—Weep, children, you no longer have a father.
‘Les Chiméres’ (1854) ‘Le Christ aux Oliviers’ epigraph (summarising a passage in Jean Paul’s Blumen-
Frucht-und Dornstücke (1796-7) in which God’s children are referred to as ‘orphans’)
Je suis le tènèbreux,—le veuf,—l’inconsolè,
Le prince d’Aquitaine á la tour abolie:
Ma seule ètoile est morte, et mon luth constellè
Porte le soleil noir de la mèlancolie.
I am the darkly shaded, the bereaved, the inconsolate, the prince of Aquitaine, with the blasted
tower. My only star is dead, and my star-strewn lute carries on it the black sun of melancholy.
‘El Desdichado’
En quoi un homard est-il plus ridicule qu’un chien...ou [que] toute autre bête dont on se fait
suivre? J’ai le goût des homards, qui sont tranquilles, sèrieux, savent les secrets de la mer,
n’aboient pas et n’avalent pas la monade des gens comme les chiens, si antipathiques á Goethe,
lequel pourtant n’ètait pas fou.
Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog...or any other animal that one chooses
to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know
the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark, and they don’t gnaw upon one’s monadic privacy like dogs
do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn’t mad.
In justification of his walking a lobster, on a lead, in the gardens of the Palais Royal, in T. Gautier ‘Portraits et
Souvenirs Littèraires’ (1875) (translated by Richard Holmes in T. Gautier ‘My Phantoms’ (1976) p. 149)
2.15 Allan Nevins 1890-1971
The former Allies had blundered in the past by offering Germany too little, and offering even
that too late, until finally Nazi Germany had become a menace to all mankind.
In ‘Current History’ (New York) May 1935, p. 178
2.16 Sir Henry Newbolt 1862-1938
‘Take my drum to England, hang et by the shore,
Strike et when your powder’s runnin’ low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I’ll quit the port o’ Heaven,
An’ drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago.’