The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

I am for the woods against the world,
But are the woods for me?
‘The Kiss’ (1931)
Dance on this ball-floor thin and wan,
Use him as though you love him;
Court him, elude him, reel and pass,
And let him hate you through the glass.
‘Midnight Skaters’ (1925)
I have been young, and now am not too old;
And I have seen the righteous forsaken,
His health, his honour and his quality taken.
This is not what we were formerly told.
‘Report on Experience’ (1929)
This was my country and it may be yet,
But something flew between me and the sun.
‘The Resignation’ (1928)
2.139 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt 1840-1922
To the Grafton Gallery to look at...the Post-Impressionist pictures sent over from Paris...The
drawing is on the level of that of an untaught child of seven or eight years old, the sense of colour
that of a tea-tray painter, the method that of a schoolboy who wipes his fingers on a slate after
spitting on them...These are not works of art at all, unless throwing a handful of mud against a
wall may be called one. They are the works of idleness and impotent stupidity, a pornographic
show.
‘My Diaries’ (1920) 15 November 1910
2.140 Ronald Blythe 1922—
As for the British churchman, he goes to church as he goes to the bathroom, with the minimum
of fuss and with no explanation if he can help it.
‘The Age of Illusion’ (1963) ch. 12
An industrial worker would sooner have a £5 note but a countryman must have praise.
‘Akenfield’ (1969) ch. 5
2.141 Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus) c.476-524
Nam in omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum genus est infortunii, fuisse felicem.
For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of misfortune is to have been happy.
‘De Consolatione Philosophiae’ bk. 2, prose 4
2.142 Louise Bogan 1897-1970
Women have no wilderness in them,