The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

(1975)
Wordsworth—stupendous genius! damned fool! These poets run about their ponds though they
cannot fish.
Fragment of a letter, recorded in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson, December 1 1816: L. A. Marchand (ed.)
‘Byron’s Letters and Journals’ vol. 5 (1976) p. 13
Love in this part of the world is no sinecure.
Letter to John Murray from Venice, 27 December 1816, in L. A. Marchand (ed.) ‘Byron’s Letters and
Journals’ vol. 5 (1976)
I hate things all fiction...there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric
and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.
Letter to John Murray from Venice, April 2 1817, in L. A. Marchand (ed.) ‘Byron’s Letters and Journals’ vol.
5 (1976)
Is it not life, is it not the thing?—Could any man have written it—who has not lived in the
world?—and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a gondola? Against a wall? in a
court carriage? in a vis a vis?—on a table?—and under it?
On ‘Don Juan’ in a letter to Douglas Kinnaird, October 26 1819: L. A. Marchand (ed.) ‘Byron’s Letters and
Journals’ vol. 6 (1978)
The reading or non-reading a book—will never keep down a single petticoat.
Letter to Richard Hoppner, October 29 1819, in L. A. Marchand (ed.) ‘Byron’s Letters and Journals’ vol. 6
(1978)
Such writing is a sort of mental masturbation—he is always f—gg—g his imagination.—I
don’t mean that he is indecent but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a state which is neither
poetry nor any thing else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium.
On Keats in a letter to John Murray, November 9 1820: L. A. Marchand (ed.) ‘Byron’s Letters and Journals’
vol. 7 (1979)
I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
Referring to the instantaneous success of ‘Childe Harold’, in Thomas Moore ‘Letters and Journals of Lord
Byron’ (1830) vol. 1, p. 346
You should have a softer pillow than my heart.
To his wife, who had rested her head on his breast, in E. C. Mayne (ed.) ‘The Life and Letters of Anne
Isabella, Lady Noel Byron’ (1929) ch. 11
3.0 C
3.1 James Branch Cabell 1879-1958
A man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body.
‘Jurgen’ (1919) ch. 20
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears
this is true.
‘The Silver Stallion’ (1926) bk. 4, ch. 26