The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘Not Waving but Drowning’ (1957)
People who are always praising the past
And especially the times of faith as best
Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages
And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.
‘The Past’ (1957)
Private Means is dead
God rest his soul, officers and fellow-rankers said.
‘Private Means is Dead’ (1962)
This Englishwoman is so refined
She has no bosom and no behind.
‘This Englishwoman’ (1937)
I long for the Person from Porlock
To bring my thoughts to an end,
I am growing impatient to see him
I think of him as a friend.
‘Thoughts about the “Person from Porlock”’ (1962).
If you cannot have your dear husband for a comfort and a delight, for a breadwinner and a
crosspatch, for a sofa, chair or a hot-water bottle, one can use him as a Cross to be Borne.
‘Novel on Yellow Page’ (1936) p. 24
If there wasn’t death, I think you couldn’t go on.
In ‘Observer’ 9 November 1969
7.117 Sydney Smith 1771-1845
The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common
feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, and the
fatuity of idiots.
‘Peter Plymley’s Letters’ (1929) p. 9
A Curate—there is something which excites compassion in the very name of a Curate!!!
‘Peter Plymley’s Letters’ (1929) p. 127 ‘Persecuting Bishops’
Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his
time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr Hume in 1739.
‘Sketches of Moral Philosophy’ introduction
We shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into
the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the
office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made
for each other.
‘Sketches of Moral Philosophy’ Lecture 9
I never could find any man who could think for two minutes together.
‘Sketches of Moral Philosophy’ Lecture 9