The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our
frontier lies.
‘Hansard’ 30 July 1934, col. 2339
I shall be but a short time tonight. I have seldom spoken with greater regret, for my lips are not
yet unsealed. Were these troubles over I would make a case, and I guarantee that not a man would
go into the lobby against us.
‘Hansard’ 10 December 1935, col. 856, on the Abyssinian crisis (usually quoted: ‘My lips are sealed’)
Do not run up your nose dead against the Pope or the NUM!
In Lord Butler ‘The Art of Memory’ (1982) ‘Iain Macleod’.
They [parliament] are a lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the
war.
In J. M. Keynes ‘Economic Consequences of the Peace’ (1919) ch. 5
There are three classes which need sanctuary more than others—birds, wild flowers, and Prime
Ministers.
In ‘Observer’ 24 May 1925
The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.
In G. M. Young ‘Stanley Baldwin’ (1952) ch. 13
2.13 Arthur James Balfour (First Earl of Balfour) 1848-1930
‘Christianity, of course...but why journalism?’
Replying to Frank Harris, who had claimed that ‘all the faults of the age come from Christianity and
journalism’, in Margot Asquith ‘Autobiography’ (1920) vol. 1, ch. 10
[Our] whole political machinery pre-supposes a people so fundamentally at one that they can
safely afford to bicker.
In Walter Bagehot ‘The English Constitution’ (World Classics ed., 1928) Introduction
I thought he was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.
Describing Churchill, in Winston Churchill ‘My Early Life’ (1930) ch. 17
It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be
trusted to speak the truth.
Letter to Mrs Drew, 19 May 1891, in L. March-Phillips and B. Christian (eds.) ‘Some Hawarden
Letters’ (1917) ch. 7
2.14 Ballads
There was a youth, and a well-beloved youth,
And he was an esquire’s son,
He loved the bailiff’s daughter dear,
That lived in Islington.
‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington’
All in the merry month of May,
When green buds they were swellin’,