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`if ye be kind towards women and fear to wrong them, God is well acquainted with what ye do.'

Sometimes the relationship is an echo rather than a direct borrowing. Confucius tells us that `A ruler who governs his state by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it,' and we are at once reminded of the assertion of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: `I am constant as the northern star.' At other times, we are made aware of a common tradition: the 12th-century rabbi Eleazar of Worms states that `The highest sacrifice is a broken and a contrite heart,' and we recall the words of the psalm, `a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou shalt not despise.'

Oxford dictionaries draw their strength from a constant monitoring of the language, and it is appropriate that the most up-to-date quotations in the news can be found here, with politicians as always to the fore. Bill Clinton reflects on the relationship that should not have occurred (`[It] was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong'), and his wife Hillary on the nature of marriage (`the only people who count...are the two that are in it'). George Mitchell looks forward somewhat ruefully to the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland (`Nobody ever said it would be easy - and that was an understatement'), and Bertie Ahern celebrates his achievement (`It is a day we should treasure'). Tony Benn, whose entry spans 30 years, comments crisply, `When I think of Cool Britannia, I think of old people dying of hypothermia.' Barbara Castle gives her recipe for longevity, `I will fight for what I believe in until I drop dead. And that's what keeps you alive.' Seamus Heaney, in his funeral address, reflects movingly on the death of Ted Hughes: `No death outside my immediate family has left me more bereft. No death in my lifetime has hurt poets more.' Jeremy Paxman takes a firm line on conformity to an official line: `Speaking for myself, if there is a message I want to be off it.'

While it is important that we cover the up to date, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations should also be the source in which references in older writers likely to be encountered today can be checked. Two books recently published in the Oxford World's Classics editions make the point. Robert Fraser's abridgement of Fraser's The Golden Bough, published in 1994, carried the original epigraph from Macaulay's The Battle of Lake Regillus, and the often-quoted lines

The priest who slew the slayer,

And shall himself be slain

can now be found in this dictionary.

In another book now available in the World's Classics, Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, an allusion is made to the figure of `Hamilton Tighe'. The origin, and explanation, of this reference can now be found in quotations from `The Legend of Hamilton Tighe' by Richard Barham. The growth in popularity of audio cassettes is another trend of which we have taken note, since through this medium our users may well come into contact with the prose and poetry of an earlier age.

It is pleasing that in some cases we have been able to improve on the information provided in the last edition, as for example for the quotation then attributed to Robert Burton: `Every thing, saith Epictetus, hath two handles, the one to be held by, the other not.' We now have an entry for the Stoic philosopher, where the original quotation is to be found. The Dictionary can also provide the origin of what are now established phrases in our language: `cruel and unusual punishment' and the `the sins of the fathers' are both for the first time found here.

Chronologically the Dictionary spans the ages, and it is exciting that we have been able to enrich the dictionary with quotations from earlier centuries which bring the speakers vividly to life. `Everybody's quick to blame the alien,' says Aeschylus, and Plutarch comments on Cicero's ability `to see beneath the surface of Caesar's public policy and to fear it, as one might fear the smiling surface of the sea.' The historian Thucydides reflects that `Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.' Pliny the Elder is concerned about standards of scholarship: `I have found that the most professedly reliable and modern writers have copied the old authors word for word, without acknowledgement.'

New quotations are spread through the centuries. The 16th-century merchant and writer Robert Thorne gives his view on exploration: `There is no land unhabitable, nor sea innavigable.' Francis Bacon looks nearer home, to his garden: `Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.' William Wycherley has a sardonic view of the law: `A man without money needs no more fear a crowd of lawyers than a crowd of pickpockets.' Edward Gibbon, considering the Roman penal system, gives the view that: