The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (1951) ch. 22.
A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn’t stink a little bit of the
writer’s pride in having given up his pride.
‘Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction’ (1963) p. 195 ‘Seymour’ (1959)
7.9 John of Salisbury d. 1180
Siquidem vita brevis, sensus hebes, negligentiae torpor, inutilis occupatio, nos paucula, scire
permittunt, et eadem iugiter excutit et avellit ab anime fraudatrix scientiae, inimica et infida
semper memoriae noverca, oblivio.
The brevity of our life, the dullness of our senses, the torpor of our indifference, the futility of
our occupation, suffer us to know but little: and that little is soon shaken and then torn from the
mind by that traitor to learning, that hostile and faithless stepmother to memory, oblivion.
‘Prologue to the Policraticus’ (ed. C. C. J. Webb) vol. 1, p. 12, l. 13; translation by Helen Waddell
7.10 Lord Salisbury (Robert Gascoyne, third Marquess of Salisbury) 1830-1903
English policy is to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to
avoid collisions.
Letter to Earl of Lytton, 9 March 1877, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol.
2, p. 130
A great deal of misapprehension arises from the popular use of maps on a small scale. As with
such maps you are able to put a thumb on India and a finger on Russia, some persons at once
think that the political situation is alarming and that India must be looked to. If the noble Lord
would use a larger map—say one on the scale of the Ordnance Map of England—he would find
that the distance between Russia and British India is not to be measured by the finger and thumb,
but by a rule.
House of Commons, 11 June 1877
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should
trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians,
nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their
strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Letter to Lord Lytton, 15 June 1877, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol. 2,
ch. 4
The agonies of a man who has to finish a difficult negotiation, and at the same time to entertain
four royalties at a country house can be better imagined than described.
Letter to Lord Lyons, 5 June 1878, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol. 2, p.
275
What with deafness, ignorance of French, and Bismarck’s extraordinary mode of speech,
Beaconsfield has the dimmest idea of what is going on—understands everything crossways—and
imagines a perpetual conspiracy.
Letter to Lady Salisbury from the Congress of Berlin, 23 June 1878, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of
Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol. 2, p. 287