The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations From Oxford University Press, USA

Product Description

This is a major new edition of Oxford's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of quotations, bringing you the wisdom of the ages and the sound bites of today in 20,000+ quotations. The text is a browser's paradise, covering people and events from Cleopatra to J. K. Rowling, and the battle of Marathon to the Hutton Inquiry. The keyword index will help you to trace that half-remembered quote, and identifies the quotations that give us key phrases such as 'state of the Union' and 'dodgy dossier'. Special sections bring together categories such as Misquotations and Film lines. Traditional areas have been enriched and the best of the new added, and the Introduction tells the story of the nation's favourite quotations dictionary over 60 years. 'Come, and take choice of all my library.' William Shakespeare 'Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.' Michelangelo 'If business always made the right decisions, business wouldn't be business.' J. Paul Getty 'I was captured for life by chemistry and by crystals.' Dorothy Hodgkin 'Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.' Ernest Shackleton
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #70703 in Books
Published on: 2004-12-09
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
1168 pages
Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Samuel Johnson once observed that "Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language." And since every book of quotations certainly contributes to the enlargement of the reference collection, why add another?

This is no ordinary book of quotations. As one would expect from the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary, this work is thoroughly cross-referenced, packed with special features, and, most importantly for a collection of quotations, provides citations and context for each entry. Among the special features set off in boxes throughout the text are lists of epitaphs, catchphrases, borrowed titles, misquotations, opening lines, last words, and film lines and titles. The keyword index is exhaustive.

Since its first edition, in 1941, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has offered a wide array of quotations, succeeding in preserving the wisdom of the ages as well as presenting the latest catchphrases and sound bites. The fifth edition (1999) restored sections devoted to proverbs and nursery rhymes that had been cut from an earlier edition; these sections remain. That edition had paid particular attention to the sacred texts of several world religions, and those passages are also enshrined in this new edition. A comparison of this edition with its predecessor found that although George Abbott, Beryl Bainbridge, Lord Bancroft, Antonio Callado, Salvador Dali, Newton Gingrich, Ice Cube, Barry Scheck, Emma Thompson, and Raquel Welch have been dropped, Elizabeth David, Amelia Earhart, Carly Fiorina, Penelope Fitzgerald, Indira Gandhi, Bill Gates, Frank Gehry, Rudolph Giuliani, David Hare, Eddie Izzard, Frida Kahlo, Donna Karan, Estee Lauder, Alison Lurie, Thurgood Marshall, Georgia O'Keefe, Vladimir Putin, J. K. Rowling, Ernest Shackleton, Ariel Sharon, and Sam Walton have been added.

Large collections will want to add this edition to the previous ones on their shelves; smaller collections should consider it as a way to add depth to their quotation holdings. Carolyn Mulac
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
`Review from previous edition Invaluable.' Brian MacArthur in The Times 3 December 1999

`Still the best.' John Walsh in The Independent 20 June 2002

`I could re-read it over and over again and never grow bored, for its pages contain all the insight of a library.' Minette Walters in Daily Mail 11 January 2002

About the Author
Elizabeth Knowles is Publishing Manager for Oxford Quotations Dictionaries and is a historical lexicographer, having previously worked on the 4th edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
Customer Reviews

It's... Good... Not For Me Though...
There's a plethora of quotes and people, it's an amazing book. It's by author name. My beef with it is...

Some of my favorite people are really slacked on. Most notably American writers, essayists and thinkers. Twain get barely a full page. Melville a few lines (Moby Dick has quite a few more worthy here) Thoreau, Emerson, even Churchill has some of my favorite lines he's said missing... Nietzsche too imo should have pages he has not even one. And more disappointed with.

NOW - there are more speakers here yeah the good thing, still, I expected more.

Now I've gotten the Yale's Book of Quotations. Almost half the quotes here but they have so much more from the names I mentioned above. I don't know maybe my American Bias but I selfishly give this book 3 stars for skimping imo on many of my favorite people.

(Not to say they don't have tons of names won't find other places deservingly and other famous people, notiable English writers... many pages (Blake, Lord Tennyson) Definitely poets are NOT skimped here, you'll find many great ones here that other books won't have.)

So don't get me wrong, it's not bad, and some of my favs DO have lots of quotes here and lines and poems. I just wish it had more, and it has tons n tons! =)


Not my cup of tea
The following comments refer to the second (1955) edition. Let us hope the third edition is substantially improved.

A stuffy, dated, donnish, and relentlessly Anglocentric compilation, reeking of the classics curriculum at Oxford. According to the preface, familiarity is the chief criterion for inclusion. Familiarity to whom, for heaven's sake? Professors of antique languages and literatures? Horace gets seven pages. Emily Dickinson gets two lines, as does Hawthorne. Melville and Conrad get nothing at all. "The horror! The horror!"

********** TEN STARS!
Who said what, when and for what reason? If it's been said, written, shouted, exclaimed or moaned in a breathy sigh, you'll find it recorded here. Three-thousand years worth of quotes from everyone who has ever been anyone: generals, saints, writers, actors, politicians, judges, criminals, heroes, the infamous, the dying, the triumphant, the fictional and the mythical. In this magnficent volume you can search either by an individual name and see all listings for that person, or by subject, and see all recorded passages about whatever topic you wish to investigate. Great for public speakers, students, writers, or lovers of wit, excoriation, or profundity, and absolutely deserving of the word "Encyclopedia" in its title.