The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘Nation’ 15 April 1943.
There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it hardly becomes any of us
To talk about the rest of us.
Attributed, among others, to Edward Wallis Hoch (1849-1945) on the grounds of it having appeared in his
Kansas publication, the Marion Record, though in fact disclaimed by him; ‘behooves’ sometimes substituted
for ‘becomes’
There’s nae luck about the house,
There’s nae luck at a’,
There’s nae luck about the house
When our gudeman’s awa’.
‘The Mariner’s Wife’
There was a faith-healer of Deal
Who said, ‘Although pain isn’t real,
If I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.’
‘The Week-End Book’ (1925) p. 158
They are a form of statuary which no careful father would wish his daughter, or no discerning
young man his fiancèe, to see.
‘Evening Standard’ 19 June 1908, commenting on Jacob Epstein’s sculptures for the former BMA building in
the Strand, London
They come as a boon and a blessing to men,
The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley pen.
Advertisement by MacNiven and H. Cameron Ltd., c. 1920; almost cetainly inspired by J. C. Prince ‘The Pen
and the Press’ in E. W. Cole (ed.) ‘The Thousand Best Poems in the World’ (1891): It came as a boon and a
blessing to men, The peaceful, the pure, the victorious Pen!
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.
Stevins MS. (c.1555)
[This film] is so cryptic as to be almost meaningless. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless
objectionable.
The British Board of Film Censors, banning Jean Cocteau’s film ‘The Seashell and the Clergyman’ (1929), in
J. C. Robertson ‘Hidden Cinema’ (1989) ch. 1
This is a rotten argument, but it should be good enough for their lordships on a hot summer
afternoon.