The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats, for boys and women; but little of solid
meat for men.
‘Fables Ancient and Modern’ (1700) preface (on Abraham Cowley)
How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a
fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the
grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make
the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing.
‘Of Satire’ (1693)
Sure the poet...spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.
‘On Settle’
A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a
bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband.
‘On Settle’
4.94 Alexander Dubcek 1921—
Ve sluzb ch lidu dclali takovou politiku, aby socialismus neztr cel svou lidskou tv r.
In the service of the people we followed a policy so that socialism would not lose its human
face.
In ‘Rudé Právo’ 19 July 1968. A resolution by the party group in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 1968,
referred to Czechoslovakian foreign policy acquiring ‘its own defined face’: Rudé Právo 14 March 1968
4.95 Joachim Du Bellay 1522-60
France, mére des arts, des armes et des lois.
France, mother of arts, of warfare, and of laws.
‘Les regrets’ (1558) sonnet no. 9
Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage
Ou comme cestuy lá qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retournè, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son aage!
Happy he who like Ulysses has made a great journey, or like that man who won the Fleece and
then came home, full of experience and good sense, to live the rest of his time among his family!
‘Les regrets’ (1558) sonnet no. 31
Plus que le marbre dur me plaist l’ardoise fine,
Plus mon Loyre Gaulois, que le Tybre Latin,
Plus mon petit Lyrè, que le mont Palatin,
Et plus que l’air marin la doulceur angevine.
I love thin slate more than hard marble, my Gallic Loire more than the Latin Tiber, my little
Lirè more than the Palatine Hill, and more than the sea air the sweetness of Anjou.
‘Les regrets’ (1558) sonnet no. 31