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`if ye be kind towards women and fear to wrong them, God is well acquainted with
what ye do.'
Sometimes the relationship is an echo rather than a direct borrowing. Confucius
tells us that `A ruler who governs his state by virtue is like the north polar star,
which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it,' and we are at
once reminded of the assertion of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: `I am constant as
the northern star.' At other times, we are made aware of a common tradition: the
12th-century rabbi Eleazar of Worms states that `The highest sacrifice is a broken
and a contrite heart,' and we recall the words of the psalm, `a broken and a contrite
heart, O God, thou shalt not despise.'
Oxford dictionaries draw their strength from a constant monitoring of the language,
and it is appropriate that the most up-to-date quotations in the news can be found
here, with politicians as always to the fore. Bill Clinton reflects on the relationship
that should not have occurred (`[It] was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong'), and
his wife Hillary on the nature of marriage (`the only people who count...are the two
that are in it'). George Mitchell looks forward somewhat ruefully to the peace
negotiations in Northern Ireland (`Nobody ever said it would be easy - and that was
an understatement'), and Bertie Ahern celebrates his achievement (`It is a day we
should treasure'). Tony Benn, whose entry spans 30 years, comments crisply,
`When I think of Cool Britannia, I think of old people dying of hypothermia.' Barbara
Castle gives her recipe for longevity, `I will fight for what I believe in until I drop
dead. And that's what keeps you alive.' Seamus Heaney, in his funeral address,
reflects movingly on the death of Ted Hughes: `No death outside my immediate
family has left me more bereft. No death in my lifetime has hurt poets more.'
Jeremy Paxman takes a firm line on conformity to an official line: `Speaking for
myself, if there is a message I want to be off it.'
While it is important that we cover the up to date, the
Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations
should also be the source in which references in older writers likely to
be encountered today can be checked. Two books recently published in the Oxford
World's Classics editions make the point. Robert Fraser's abridgement of Fraser's
The Golden Bough
, published in 1994, carried the original epigraph from
Macaulay's The Battle of Lake Regillus
, and the often-quoted lines
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain
can now be found in this dictionary.
In another book now available in the World's Classics, Rider Haggard's
King
Solomon's Mines
, an allusion is made to the figure of `Hamilton Tighe'. The origin,
and explanation, of this reference can now be found in quotations from `The
Legend of Hamilton Tighe' by Richard Barham. The growth in popularity of audio
cassettes is another trend of which we have taken note, since through this medium
our users may well come into contact with the prose and poetry of an earlier age.
It is pleasing that in some cases we have been able to improve on the information
provided in the last edition, as for example for the quotation then attributed to
Robert Burton: `Every thing, saith Epictetus, hath two handles, the one to be held
by, the other not.' We now have an entry for the Stoic philosopher, where the
original quotation is to be found. The
Dictionary
can also provide the origin of what
are now established phrases in our language: `cruel and unusual punishment' and
the `the sins of the fathers' are both for the first time found here.
Chronologically the
Dictionary
spans the ages, and it is exciting that we have been
able to enrich the dictionary with quotations from earlier centuries which bring the
speakers vividly to life. `Everybody's quick to blame the alien,' says Aeschylus, and
Plutarch comments on Cicero's ability `to see beneath the surface of Caesar's
public policy and to fear it, as one might fear the smiling surface of the sea.' The
historian Thucydides reflects that `Happiness depends on being free, and freedom
depends on being courageous.' Pliny the Elder is concerned about standards of
scholarship: `I have found that the most professedly reliable and modern writers
have copied the old authors word for word, without acknowledgement.'
New quotations are spread through the centuries. The 16th-century merchant and
writer Robert Thorne gives his view on exploration: `There is no land unhabitable,
nor sea innavigable.' Francis Bacon looks nearer home, to his garden: `Nothing is
more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.' William Wycherley
has a sardonic view of the law: `A man without money needs no more fear a crowd
of lawyers than a crowd of pickpockets.' Edward Gibbon, considering the Roman
penal system, gives the view that: