The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

To convince the whole race
It knows nothing whatever about Thee.
Attributed, in Langford Reed ‘Complete Limerick Book’ (1924)
There once was a man who said, ‘God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.’
In Langford Reed ‘Complete Limerick Book’ (1924), to which came the following anonymous reply:
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.
The baby doesn’t understand English and the Devil knows Latin.
On being asked to perform a baptism in English, in Evelyn Waugh ‘Ronald Knox’ (1959) pt. 1, ch. 5
A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Definition of a baby (attributed)
11.50 Vicesimus Knox 1752-1821
That learning belongs not to the female character, and that the female mind is not capable of a
degree of improvement equal to that of the other sex, are narrow and unphilosophical prejudices.
‘Essays’ ‘Moral and Literary’ (1782) no. 142
All sensible people agree in thinking that large seminaries of young ladies, though managed
with all the vigilance and caution which human abilities can exert, are in danger of great
corruption.
‘Liberal Education’ (1780) sect. 27 ‘On the literary education of women’
Can anything be more absurd than keeping women in a state of ignorance, and yet so
vehemently to insist on their resisting temptation?
In Mary Wollstonecraft ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ (1792) ch. 7
11.51 Arthur Koestler 1905-83
One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.
‘Darkness at Noon’ (1940) ‘The Second Hearing’ ch. 7
The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.
‘Darkness at Noon’ (1940) ‘The Grammatical Fiction’ ch. 2
Behaviourism is indeed a kind of flat-earth view of the mind...it has substituted for the
erstwhile anthropomorphic view of the rat, a ratomorphic view of man.
‘The Ghost in the Machine’ (1967) ch. 1