The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Winter’ l. 246
Studious let me sit,
And hold high converse with the mighty dead.
‘The Seasons’ (1728) ‘Winter’ l. 431
Oh! Sophonisba! Sophonisba! oh!
‘Sophonisba’ (1730) act 3, sc. 2
How the heart listened while he pleading spoke!
While on the enlightened mind, with winning art,
His gentle reason so persuasive stole
That the charmed hearer thought it was his own.
‘To the Memory of the Right Honourable the Lord Talbot’ (1737) l. 103
8.39 James Thomson 1834-82
The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night.
‘The City of Dreadful Night’
As we rush, as we rush in the train,
The trees and the houses go wheeling back,
But the starry heavens above that plain
Come flying on our track.
‘Sunday at Hampstead’ st. 10
Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail.
‘Sunday up the River’ st. 15
8.40 Lord Thomson (Roy Herbert Thomson, Baron Thomson of Fleet) 1894-1976
Like having your own licence to print money.
On the profitability of commercial television in Britain, in R. Braddon ‘Roy Thomson’ (1965) ch. 32
8.41 Henry David Thoreau 1817-62
I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to
see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I
also believe,—’That government is best which governs not at all.’
‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849).
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
‘Civil Disobedience’ (1849)
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
‘Journal’ 11 November 1850 (published 1903)
I do not perceive the poetic and dramatic capabilities of an anecdote or story which is told me,
its significance, till some time afterwards...We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.