How to use the Dictionary

comment on T. E. Lawrence, ‘Always backing into the limelight’, is traditionally attributed to Lord Berners, but we now know that a similar comment was made by George Bernard Shaw, and recorded in a contemporary source. The diaries of the German diplomat, Count Harry Kessler, tell of a meeting with Shaw in November 1929. Lawrence had apparently complained that every move of his was followed by the Press, eliciting the Shavian response, ‘You always hide just in the middle of the limelight.’ The information came to light just too late to be fully covered by this edition.

What will perhaps be considered the most famous soundbite of 2003 (‘Ladies and gentlemen, we got him’—Paul Bremer on the capture of Saddam Hussein) was uttered after the book went to Press. Topical material will always be a problem, not least because we have a devoted, and protective, readership. Those who care for the Dictionary are, rightly, concerned for its quality: less rightly, they may then extrapolate the view that the inclusion of topical or ephemeral material is somehow likely to devalue an adjacent quotation from classical literature. While having the charge of an iconic reference book is properly a serious responsibility, we still need to remember that we are publishing for our own times. A quotations collection published in 2004 needs to include the highest profile quotations of the recent past, though with the awareness that by the time the next edition is published some of them will be dropped. In the interim, however, we cannot tell people what they should remember, or refuse to answer questions which they may reasonably ask.

In compiling the new edition, we have once more drawn on the resources of Oxford Quotations Dictionaries: our published texts (and the research which lies behind them), and our growing database of new quotations derived from our reading programme. As always we have benefited from the generosity of readers who take the trouble to write to us with questions, comments, and suggestions. Colleagues in the Reference Department have again put forward quotations encountered in work and leisure. Among those to whom we are particularly grateful for contributions of material or solutions to particular questions, we would like to thank Matthew Carter, Margot Charlton, Mike Clark, Susie Dent, Henry Hardy, Antony Jay, Ian Linton, Kirk Marlow, Nigel Rees, Ned Sherrin, Donald Smith, and Sarah Waldram. Finally, and most importantly, Susan Ratcliffe’s editorial contribution has been of key impor- tance in the preparation of this edition.

In his Introduction to the First Edition, Bernard Darwin envisaged typical readers of the Dictionary as ‘friends by the fireside…indulging in a heated quoting-match’, or as allies trying to solve a crossword puzzle. In 2004, readers are as likely to turn to it as a resource when trying to outdo a contestant on a television quiz show, solving a reference found while browsing the Net, or preparing for a presentation of their own. But although there are over sixty years, and infinite cultural and technological differences, between the worlds of the first and sixth editions, there is still a common thread: the fascination with words identified by Darwin in his opening sentence: ‘Quotation brings to many people one of the intensest joys of living.’ It is in response to this continuing fascination that we monitor the language and collect quotations. It is as always our aim to edit a text that for our own time will answer the key quotations questions, ‘Who said that?’ and ‘What’s been said about this?’

Elizabeth Knowles

Oxford 2004

The sequence of entries is by alphabetical order of author, usually by surname but with occasional exceptions such as members of royal families (e.g. Diana, Princess of Wales and Elizabeth II) and Popes (John Paul II), or authors known by a pseudonym (‘Saki’) or a nickname (Caligula). In general authors’ names are given in the form by which they are best known, so that we have Harold Macmillan (not Lord Stockton), George Eliot (not Mary Ann Evans), and H.G.Wells (not Herbert George Wells). Collections such as Anonymous, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the Missal, and so forth, are included in the alphabetical sequence. Some Anonymous quotations may be included in one of the special category sections (see below).

Author names are followed by dates of birth and death (where known) and brief descriptions; where appropriate, cross-references () are then given to quotations

about that author elsewhere in the text (on Byron: see Lamb). Cross-references are also made to other entries in which the author appears, e.g. ‘see also

Epitaphs’ and ‘see also Lennon and McCartney’. Within each author entry, quotations are separated by literary form (novels, plays, poems: see further below)