E-Book Overview
The most authoritative paperback dictionary of quotations available, containing over 9,000 quotations from more than 2,300 authors, the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is both a fascinating read and an invaluable general reference tool. Based on the highly acclaimed seventh edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, this new edition maintains its extensive coverage of literary and historical quotations, and contains completely up-to-date material from today's influential literary and cultural figures. It is the only dictionary of quotations which ensures coverage of the most popular and widely used quotations by searching the largest ongoing language research program in the world, the Oxford English Corpus. Users will find wise and witty lines by Aristotle and Mahatma Gandhi, Herman Melville and William Blake, Marie Curie and Montaigne. Over 1000 new quotes have been added for this edition, and the dictionary includes special categories such as Catchphrases, Film Lines, Official Advice, and Political Slogans. An easy-to-use keyword index helps readers to track down quotations and their authors.
E-Book Content
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface What is a “quotation”? It is a saying or piece of writing that strikes people as so true or memorable that they quote it (or allude to it) in speech or writing. Often they will quote it directly, introducing it with a phrase like “As——says” but equally often they will assume that the reader or listener already knows the quotation, and they will simply allude to it without mentioning its source (as in the headline “A rosè is a rosè is a rosè,” referring obliquely to a line by Gertrude Stein). This dictionary has been compiled from extensive evidence of the quotations that are actually used in this way. The dictionary includes the commonest quotations which were found in a collection of more than 200,000 c