The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (23 page)
Read The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Online
Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
63–14
Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions.
on Varus' loss of three legions in battle with Germanic tribes,
ad
9
Suetonius
Lives of the Caesars
"Divus Augustus" sect. 23
Festina lente.Make haste slowly.
Suetonius
Lives of the Caesars
"Divus Augustus" sect. 25
He could boast that he inherited it brick and left it marble.
referring to the city of Rome
Suetonius
Lives of the Caesars
"Divus Augustus" sect. 28
Suu Kyi 1945–
It's very different from living in academia in Oxford. We called someone vicious in the
Times Literary Supplement
. We didn't know what vicious was.
on returning to Burma (Myanmar)
in
Observer
25 September 1988 "Sayings of the Week"
In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth, women are not merely tolerated but valued.
videotape speech at NGO Forum on Women, China, early September 1995
ad
121–80
Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly: but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sinks to rest.
Meditations
bk. 4, sect. 49
Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.
Meditations
bk. 5, sect. 18
Mankind have been created for the sake of one another. Either instruct them, therefore, or endure them.
Meditations
bk. 8, sect. 59
c.
309
ad
Nemo bonus Britto est.No good man is a Briton.
Epigrams
119
1775–1817
An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome.
Emma
(1816) ch. 3
One has no great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.
Emma
(1816) ch. 36
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.
Mansfield Park
(1814) ch. 48
"Oh! it is only a novel!…only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda:" or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
Northanger Abbey
(1818) ch. 5
From politics, it was an easy step to silence.
Northanger Abbey
(1818) ch. 14
Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay every thing open.
Northanger Abbey
(1818) ch. 34
"My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." "You are mistaken," said he gently, "that is not good company, that is the best."
Persuasion
(1818) ch. 16
Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.
Persuasion
(1818) ch. 23
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice
(1813) ch. 1
In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared…to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free of them there.
Pride and Prejudice
(1813) ch. 15
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
Pride and Prejudice
(1813) ch. 57
3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work on.
letter to Anna Austen, 9 September 1814
The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?
letter to J. Edward Austen, 16 December 1816
Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked.
letter to Fanny Knight, 23 March 1817
I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.
on starting Emma
J. E. Austen-Leigh
A Memoir of Jane Austen
(1926 ed.)