The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we
mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) ch. 4, sect. 4 (translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter)
And waiting means hanging on ahead, it means regarding time and the present moment not as a
boon, but an obstruction; it means making their actual content null and void, by mentally
overleaping them. Waiting we say is long. We might just as well—or more accurately—say it is
short, since it consumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making any use of them
as such.
‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) ch. 5, sect. 5 (translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter)
We come out of the dark and go into the dark again, and in between lie the experiences of our
life. But the beginning and end, birth and death, we do not experience; they have no subjective
character, they fall entirely in the category of objective events, and that’s that.
‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) ch. 6, sect. (translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter)
Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.
‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) ch. 6
All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.
‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) ch. 6, sect. 7
Unser Sterben mehr eine Angelegenheit der Weiterlebenden als unserer selbst.
A man’s dying is more the survivor’s affair than his own.
‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) ch. 6, sect. 8, (translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter)
For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up
with it, as are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music divides, measures,
articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once.
‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) ch. 7, sect. 1, (translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter)
1.64 Lord John Manners, Duke of Rutland 1818-1906
Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
But leave us still our old nobility!
‘England’s Trust’ (1841), pt. 3, l. 227
1.65 Katherine Mansfield (Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp) 1888-1923
E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He’s a rare fine hand at that. Feel
this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea.
‘Journal’ May 1917 (1927) p. 69
Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in
order.
‘Journal’ 29 January 1922 (1927) p. 224
1.66 Lord Mansfield 1705-93
The constitution does not allow reasons of state to influence our judgements: God forbid it