The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

And her mother came too!
Title of song (1921, music by Ivor Novello)
8.52 Emperor Titus A.D. 39-81
Amici, diem perdidi.
Friends, I have lost a day.
Reflecting that he had done nothing to help anybody all day, in Suetonius ‘Titus’ 8, i
8.53 John Tobin 1770-1804
The man that lays his hand upon a woman,
Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch
Whom ’t were gross flattery to name a coward.
‘The Honeymoon’ act 2, sc. 1
8.54 Alexis De Tocqueville 1805-59
L’esprit français est de ne pas vouloir de supèrieur. L’esprit anglais de vouloir des infèrieurs.
Le Français léve les yeux sans cesse au-dessus de lui avec inquiètude. L’Anglais les baisse audessous
de lui avec complaisance. C’est de part et d’autre de l’orgueil, mais entendu de maniére
diffèrente.
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman
constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with
satisfaction. On either side it is pride, but understood in a different way.
‘Voyage en Angleterre et en Irlande de 1835’ 18 May
C’est au milieu de ce cloaque infect que le plus grand fleuve de l’industrie humaine prend sa
source et va fèconder l’univers. De cet ègout immonde, l’or pur s’ècoule. C’est lá que l’esprit
humain se perfectionne et s’abrutit; que la civilisation produit ses merveilles et que l’homme
civilisèe redevient presque sauvage.
It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and
carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth. Here it is that
humanity achieves for itself both perfection and brutalization, that civilization produces its
wonders, and that civilized man becomes again almost a savage.
Writing about Manchester in ‘Voyage en Angleterre et en Irlande de 1835’ 2 July
8.55 Alvin Toffler 1928—
Future shock.
Title of book (1970)
8.56 J. R. R. Tolkien 1892-1973
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of
worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to