The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

them pass, but the 3rd 4th 5th 6th—merely the scratching of pimples on the body of the bootboy
at Claridges.
Letter to Lytton Strachey, 24 April 1922, in ‘Letters’ (1976) vol. 2, p. 551
11.132 Alexander Woollcott 1887-1943
She [Dorothy Parker] is so odd a blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth. It is not so much the
familiar phenomenon of a hand of steel in a velvet glove as a lacy sleeve with a bottle of vitriol
concealed in its folds.
‘While Rome Burns’ (1934) ‘Our Mrs Parker’
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
In R. E. Drennan ‘Wit’s End’ (1973)
A broker is a man who takes your fortune and runs it into a shoestring.
In Samuel Hopkins Adams ‘Alexander Woollcott’ (1945) ch. 15
I have no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only wish to be entertained by some of your
grosser reminiscences.
Letter to Rex O’Malley, 1942, in Samuel Hopkins Adams ‘Alexander Woollcott’ (1945) ch. 34
11.133 Dorothy Wordsworth 1771-1855
When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the
waterside...But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of
the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a
country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about
and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on pillow for weariness and the rest
tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon
them over the lake.
‘The Grasmere Journals’ 15 April 1802.
11.134 Elizabeth Wordsworth 1840-1932
If all the good people were clever,
And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.
But somehow, ’tis seldom or never
The two hit it off as they should;
The good are so harsh to the clever,
The clever so rude to the good!
‘Good and Clever’
11.135 William Wordsworth 1770-1850
My apprehensions come in crowds;
I dread the rustling of the grass;