Oxford Quotes
More Oxford Quotes
So, then, Oxford Street, stonyhearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee.
thomas de quincey— Pt. I (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856))
Upon the present occasion London was full of clergymen. The specially clerical clubs, the Oxford and Cambridge, the Old University, and the Athenaeum, were black with them.
Anthony Trollope— Ch. 33 (Phineas Redux (1874))
Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.
— Max Beerbohm, in Connie Robertson Dictionary of Quotations, Wordsworth Editions, 1 January 1998, p.34
Anyone taking classics or history for the prestige is either at Oxford or stuck in 1909.
— Laura Penny, More Money Than Brains, p. 13
So poetry, which is in Oxford made An art, in London only is a trade.
john dryden— 1673 'Prologue to the University of Oxon?at the Acting of The Silent Woman'.
The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of theThames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctityand truth of the revelation of Mahomet.
Edward Gibbon— 1776-88 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.52.
The clever men at Oxford Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half as much As intelligent MrToad.
Kenneth Grahame— 1908 The Wind in the Willows, ch.10.
I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.
— 1937 Speech,York, 4 Nov.
Jowett, in his day, did probably more than any other single man to let some fresh air into the exhausted atmosphere of the [Oxford] common rooms, and to widen the intellectual horizons of the place.
Benjamin Jowett— H. H. Asquith, letter to Lady Horner, October 26, 1891, quoted in Roy Jenkins Asquith (1964) p. 22.
Anyone taking classics or history for the prestige is either at Oxford or stuck in 1909.
laura penny— Chapter One, Don't Need No Edjumacation, p. 13
[Oxford] Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs and unpopular names and impossible loyalties.
Matthew Arnold— Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, closing paragraph of preface.
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, Returning home on summer-nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the punt’s rope chops round.
Matthew Arnold— St. 8. (The Scholar Gypsy (1853))
Are ye too changed, ye hills? See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men> Tonight from Oxford up your pathway strays! Here came I often, often, in old days; Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.
Matthew Arnold— St. 1. (Thyrsis (1866))
I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
max beerbohm— More, “Going Back to School” (1899)
How did it happen that the Reverend Charles Dodgson, thirty years of age, lecturer on geometry at Christ Church, Oxford, hitherto remarkable chiefly for his precision, on a single July afternoon, while rowing up the Isis with a brother don and three little girls, parthenogenetically gave birth to one of the most famous stories of all time?
florence becker lennon— Page 23 (The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962))
What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.
bertrand russell— Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902.
Gladstone will soon have it all his own way; and, whenever he gets my place, we shall have strange doings...He is a dangerous man, keep him in Oxford, and he is partially muzzled; but send him elsewhere, and he will run wild.
temple, henry, 3rd viscount palmerston— Remarks to Lord Shaftesbury at the dissolution of Parliament (July 1865), quoted in Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. Volume III (London: Cassell, 1886), pp. 187-188. Gladstone said in a speech (18 July) in Manchester after he had been elected for South Lancashire: "At last, my friends, I am come amongst you. And I am come - to use an expression which has of late become very famous, and which, if I judge the matter rightly, is not likely soon to be forgotten - I am come among you "unmuzzled."
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all the colleges I mean like an opera.
William Butler Yeats— Letter to Katharine Tynan (25 August 1888)
No wonder that Oxford and Cambridge profound, In learning and science so greatly abound; Since some carry thither a little each day, And we meet with so few who bring any away.
— Horace Smith, in The Tin Trumpet: Or, Heads and Tails, for the Wise and Waggish, Volume 2, Whittaker & Company, 1836, p.130
Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.
max beerbohm— Max Beerbohm, Going Back to School.
I shall be as tender of the privileges of the University of Oxford as any man living, having the greatest veneration for that learned body.
— Willes, L.C.J., Welles v. Trahern (1740), Willes' Rep. 241.
Sir, you have tasted two whole worms; you have hissed all my mystery lectures and been caught fighting a liar in the quad; you will leave Oxford by the next town drain. (Wasted two whole terms, Missed all my History lectures, caught Lighting a fire, and by the next down train...respectively)
— Attributed to Spooner (Cohen & Cohen, [1960] 1979)
[Logistics is] the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies", and the Oxford Dictionary on-line defines it as "the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation"
— Lemma "Logistics" at New Oxford American Dictionary, accessed May 14, 2014.
The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse, For Tories own no argument but force: With equal skill to Cambridge books he sent, For Whigs admit no force but argument.
— Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Letter to William Sanday, 30 May 1900; Brock and Curthoys (ed.) History of the University of Oxford (2000) vol. 7, pt. 2, ch. 25. Knowles, Elizabeth. "Lord Salisbury". Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press. [6]. Retrieved 2 December 2009.
I speak not of this college or of that, but of the University as a whole; and, gentlemen, what a whole Oxford is!
— John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge, G. W. E. Russell, "Collections and Recollections", chapter 29. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 1991. p. 155. ISBN 019211560X.
To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.
Edward Gibbon— Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life (1796) ch. 3. Knowles, Elizabeth. "Edward Gibbon". Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press. [7]. Retrieved 2 December 2009.
The clever men at Oxford Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half as much As intelligent Mr Toad!
william hazlitt— William Hazlitt, Table Talk vol. 1 (1821) "The Ignorance of the Learned". Knowles, Elizabeth. "William Hazlitt". Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press. [9]. Retrieved 2 December 2009.
At Oxford, as you know, we follow the Cambridge lead, sometimes with uncertain steps.
— Benjamin Jowett, Letter to Professor Marshall, 5 January 1886. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 1991. p. 285. ISBN 019211560X.
I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by, The grey spires of Oxford Against a pearl-grey sky; My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.
— Cardinal Newman, History of My Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 1991. p. 361. ISBN 019211560X.
