The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none.
‘What Every Woman Knows’ (performed 1908, published 1918) act 1
There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.
‘What Every Woman Knows’ (performed 1908, published 1918) act 2
The tragedy of a man who has found himself out.
‘What Every Woman Knows’ (performed 1908, published 1918) act 4
Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles,
and lets it go at that. It’s our only joke. Every woman knows that.
‘What Every Woman Knows’ (performed 1908, published 1918) act 4
2.39 Ethel Barrymore 1879-1959
For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the
grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
In George Jean Nathan ‘The Theatre in the Fifties’ (1953) p. 30
2.40 Lionel Bart 1930—
See Frank Norman (2.33) in Volume II
2.41 Roland Barthes 1915-80
Ce que le public rèclame, c’est l’image de la passion, non la passion elle-même.
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
‘Mythologies’ (1957) ‘Le monde o—l’on catche’
Je crois que l’automobile est aujourd’hui l’èquivalent assez exact des grandes cathèdrales
gothiques: je veux dire une grande crèation d’èpoque, conçue passionnèment par des artistes
inconnus, consommèe dans son image, si non dans son usage, par un peuple entier qui
s’approprie en elle un objet parfaitement magique.
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean
the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in
image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
‘Mythologies’ (1957) ‘La nouvelle Citroën’
2.42 Bernard Baruch 1870-1965
Let us not be deceived—we are today in the midst of a cold war.
Speech to South Carolina Legislature 16 April 1947, in ‘New York Times’ 17 April 1947, p. 21 (the
expression ‘cold war’ was suggested to him by H. B. Swope, former editor of the New York ‘World’)
To me old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
In ‘Newsweek’ 29 August 1955
Vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing.
In Meyer Berger ‘New York’ (1960)
A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still