The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

The bright face of danger.
‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘The Lantern-Bearers’ pt. 4
Every one lives by selling something.
‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘Beggars’ pt. 3
A mortified appetite is never a wise companion.
‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘A Christmas Sermon’ pt. 1
Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much:—surely that may be his epitaph, of
which he need not be ashamed.
‘Across the Plains’ (1892) ‘A Christmas Sermon’ pt. 4
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
‘Familiar Studies of Men and Books’ (1882) ‘Yoshida-Torajiro’
Am I no a bonny fighter?
‘Kidnapped’ (1886) ch. 10
I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David.
‘Kidnapped’ (1886) ch. 18
I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas
Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann.
‘Memories and Portraits’ (1887) ch. 4 ‘A College Magazine’
He who was prepared to help the escaping murderer or to embrace the impenitent thief, found,
to the overthrow of all his logic, that he objected to the use of dynamite.
‘More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter’ (1885) ‘The Superfluous Mansion’
These are my politics: to change what we can; to better what we can; but still to bear in mind
that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions; and for no
word however sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these
bonds.
‘More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter’ (1885) ‘Epilogue of the Cigar Divan’
The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.
‘The New Arabian Nights’ (1882) ‘The Suicide Club: Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts’
I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.
‘The New Arabian Nights’ (1882) ‘The Rajah’s Diamond: Story of the Bandbox’
The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant
texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.
‘On some technical Elements of Style in Literature’ (1885)
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is
to move.
‘Travels with a Donkey’ (1879) ‘Cheylard and Luc’
I own I like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like
the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, I should go the
length of twopence every day of my life.
‘Travels with a Donkey’ (1879) ‘Father Apollinaris’