The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

2.22 Vivian Nicholson 1936—
Spend, spend, spend.
Title of television drama (1977) by Jack Rosenthal, based on her life; on arriving to collect her husband’s
football pools winnings of £152,000 she told reporters, ‘I want to spend, and spend, and spend’; in ‘Daily
Herald’ 28 September 1961
2.23 Nicias c.470-413 B.C.
For a city consists in its men, and not in its walls nor ships empty of men.
Speech to the defeated Athenian army at Syracuse, 413 B.C. in Thucydides ‘History of the Peloponnesian
Wars’ bk. 7, sect. 77
2.24 Sir Harold Nicolson 1886-1968
Ponderous and uncertain is that relation between pressure and resistance which constitutes the
balance of power. The arch of peace is morticed by no iron tenons: the monoliths of which it is
composed are joined by no cement...One night a handful of dust will patter from the vaulting: the
bats will squeak and wheel in sudden panic: nor can the fragile fingers of man then stay the rush
and rumble of destruction.
‘Public Faces’ (1932) ch. 6
We shall have to walk and live a Woolworth life hereafter.
Predicting the outcome of World War II, in Nigel Nicolson (ed.) ‘Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1939-
45’ (1967) 4 June 1941
I am haunted by mental decay such as I saw creeping over Ramsay MacDonald. A gradual
dimming of the lights.
In Nigel Nicolson (ed.) ‘Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1945-62’ (1968) 28 April 1947
For seventeen years he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps.
On King George V, in Nigel Nicolson (ed.) ‘Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1945-62’ (1968) 17 August
1949
2.25 Reinhold Niebuhr 1892-1971
Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes
democracy necessary.
‘Children of Light and Children of Darkness’ (1944) foreword
God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed;
Give us the courage to change what should be changed;
Give us the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
In Richard Wightman Fox ‘Reinhold Niebuhr’ (1985) ch. 12 (prayer said to have been first published in 1951)
2.26 Carl Nielsen 1865-1931
Musik er liv, som dette und slukkelig.
Music is life, and like it is inextinguishable.
‘4th Symphony’ (‘The Inextinguishable’, 1916) preface