Buy Used
Used - Good See details
Price: £1.28

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Colour:
Image not available

 
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Knowles
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --  
Unknown Binding --  
Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Learn more.
There is a newer edition of this item:
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 4.8 out of 5 stars (12)
£19.20
In stock.

Book Description

1 Nov 1999 0198601735 978-0198601739 5th Revised edition
This new edition of "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" offers a broad and up-to-date coverage of quotations available today. Now with 20,000 quotations arranged by author, this is Oxford's largest quotations dictionary. As well as quotations from traditional sources, and with improved coverage of world religions and classical Greek and Latin literature, this dictionary of quotations now covers areas such as proverbs and nursery rhymes. For the first time there are special sections for advertising slogans, epitaphs, film lines, and misquotations, which bring together topical and related quotes, and allow you to browse through the best quotations on a given subject. In this new fifth edition there is enhanced accessibility with a new thematic index to help you find the best quotes on a chosen subject, more in-depth details of the earliest traceable source, an extensive keyword index, and biographical cross-references, so you will easily be able to find quotations for all occasions, and identify who said what, where, and when. This book is intended for a wide range of people such as academics, writers, and speakers, as well as the general public.


Product details

  • Hardcover: 1152 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press; 5th Revised edition edition (1 Nov 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0198601735
  • ISBN-13: 978-0198601739
  • Product Dimensions: 24.3 x 18.1 x 6.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 147,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Product Description

From the Publisher

Diamond Jubilee of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
2001 was the diamond jubilee for Oxford Quotations. It’s over 60 years since the first edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations was published in 1941. What have the main changes been? the most striking difference is a cultural one.

Current Affairs
In his Introduction to the first edition, Bernard Darwin reflected that "it is difficult today not to deal in warlike metaphors", but in fact the text of the Dictionary in those days reflected little of the period leading up to the Second World War. It is strange now to look at a page on which Winston Churchill, outnumbered by his father Randolph, is represented by a single quote (from 1906): It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude. George V's official last words (How is the Empire?) are here, but not the Abdication, or the former Edward VIII's reference to the help and support of the woman I love. (The reported headline in an American newspaper announcing Mrs Simpson's divorce in an Ipswich court, King's Moll Reno'd in Wolsey's home town, was not to be included until the 4th edition of 1992.)
The Prime Minister who had to deal with the Abdication Crisis, Stanley Baldwin, does not appear at all, although his warning that the bomber will always get through was uttered in 1932. Churchill's great counterpart Franklin Roosevelt also appears with one quote (one of the few from the 1930s): his assertion during his 1932 presidential campaign that, I pledge you - I pledge myself - to a new deal for the American people. Neville Chamberlain does not appear: it should have been possible to record his mistaken I believe it is peace for our time (on his return from Munich in 1938), although his erroneous prediction of April 1940, Hitler has missed the bus, probably did come too late for a book published in 1941. There is in fact very little to indicate the coming storm, other than an item in the Addenda to German quotations: Hermann Goering's comment in a radio broadcast of 1936, Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat. The Dictionary in those days did not try!
to reflect the key moments of current affairs.

Advertising Slogans
The novelist Norman Douglas once suggested that you can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements, and there are a number featured here. Bernard Darwin's introduction mentions what in 1941 was still a familiar advertising slogan, Pink Pills for Pale People, and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the slogan for Kruschen salts, that Kruschen feeling, became a catchphrase of the 1920s to indicate a feeling of vigorous health. Health and concurrent looks were of particular concern, although some of the slogans seem to verge on the personal: Good-morning! Have you used Pears' soap?, for example, and You ought to see me on Sunday (Knight's Castile Soap). Wright's Coal Tar Soap (corrected to Pears in the 2nd edition of 1953) has the somewhat surprising statement, He won't be happy till he gets it.
Some advertisements, well-known in 1941, seem to have been forgotten by the 1950s: Dr Brighton, advertising Brighton's health-giving properties, was also to be dropped from the second edition, as was Always welcome, keep it handy, Grant's Morella Cherry Brandy. The slogan Where's George? Gone to Lyonch reflected the popularity of Lyons' Corner Houses in the 1920s and 1930s, but was not to survive the Second World War.

Popular Songs
Popular songs include soldiers' songs from the First World War (Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag) and earlier music-hall favourites (We don't want to fight, but by jingo, if we do). There are a few precursors of larger entries in later editions: Irving Berlin is included for Alexander's Ragtime Band (1911), but not yet for Let's face the music and dance (1936). The possible dangers of social life (prefiguring Flanders and Swann's Have some Madeira, m'dear of the 1950s) were indicated by an anonymous limerick about a young lady of Kent who,
When men asked her to dine,
Gave her cocktails and wine,
She knew what it meant - but she went!
The Duke of Rutland (1818-1906), perhaps observing such a lifestyle with dismay, appealed
Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die
But leave us still our old nobility.

The World of Literature
The selection is in fact pre-eminently a literary one: the prefatory note "The Compilers to the Reader" lists as the "most quoted writers" Browning, Byron, Cowper, Dickens, Johnson, Kipling, Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, Tennyson, and Wordsworth; the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer also receive a special mention. But despite the predominance of the canonical writers, room was also found for minor figures: for example, the Victorian writer Thomas Ashe (1836-89), whose poems according to the Dictionary of National Biography "failed entirely to gain the ear of his generation" is represented by the plaintive line, Meet we no angels, Pansie? The moderns are cautiously represented: Virginia Woolf has as her single quotation the title of A Room of One's Own.
Sixty Years On
Quotation, said Bernard Darwin, brings to many people one of the intensest joys of living. The first edition of ODQ has its quotations organized in such separate sections as Authors Writing in English, Book of Common Prayer, Holy Bible, Anonymous, Ballads, Nursery Rhymes, Quotations from Punch, and Foreign Quotations (Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and German have the language of origin; Russian, Norwegian, and Swedish appear only in translation). Opening the pages is rather like walking into a traditional study lined with leather-bound volumes. The book opens a window into a different, and in many ways more orderly world, from the one we inhabit 60 years later, but our fascination with quotations endures. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it in 1876, By necessity, by proclivity, - and by delight, we all quote.


Inside This Book (Learn More)
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more


Customer Reviews

3 star
0
2 star
0
1 star
0
4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
80 of 82 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Best choice for Brits 7 Oct 2003
By Dennis Littrell TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
The question for most people looking to purchase a book of quotations is whether to get Bartlett's Familiar Quotations or The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. So perhaps it would be a good idea to compare them and see which might better meet your needs.

Both are important works of reference; both are authoritative. Bartlett's latest edition, the 17th is from 2002 while this, the latest Oxford, is from 1999 with a reprint with corrections from 2001. So both are relatively up to date. Bartlett's is a slightly larger book with perhaps 300 more pages; however the number of actual quotations is not that different. Both books quote over 3,000 authors and contain over 20,000 quotations.

The most significant difference between them, to my mind, is that in the Oxford, English authors are favored both in terms of number included and entries by, which is to be expected since the Oxford is an British publication while Bartlett's is an American publication. A quick check shows that British mathematician and philosopher Bertram Russell, for example, has more entries in the Oxford than he does in Bartlett's, whereas both Mark Twain and the Baltimore sage, H. L. Mencken, have more entries in Bartlett's than they do in the Oxford. France's Voltaire commands just about the same space in either book.

The next most important difference is that the quotations are presented alphabetically by author in the Oxford while Bartlett's presents them chronologically beginning with the oldest. Both sources give author's dates. Personally I find the alphabetical arrangement preferable because it often saves me a trip to the alphabetical "Index of Authors" in Bartlett's that I have to make before finding the author I am interested in. When one is looking for a quote by keyword, which often happens, Bartlett's is slightly to be preferred. Its Index is definitely longer (accounting for most of the difference in length between the books) and it is more extensively cross-referenced. In looking up Marx's "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" I found the quote in the Oxford from the keywords "according," "abilities," and "needs." In Bartlett's "according" did not work, but "each," "abilities," and "needs" did. So that was a standoff. However I found the Golden Rule and its source in Bartlett's without any trouble by looking under "Golden Rule" and under "do unto." In the Oxford neither "Golden Rule" nor "do unto" were in the Index of keywords. Both books give Matthew 7:12 as the source.

The Oxford has a slightly more international approach to religious texts. There is a little less of the Bible here, but more of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, and other non-Christian texts, except for the Tao Te Ching from Lao Tzu where Bartlett's has 34 entries to 19 for the Oxford.

Another feature that the Oxford has that will be handy for some is its "Special Categories" which are "Advertising Slogans" (mostly for products sold in the UK), "Misquotations," "Newspaper Headlines and Leaders," "Political Slogans and Songs," and fifteen more. These are text boxes appearing alphabetically among the quotations. Curiously they give the rather staid Oxford reputation a bit of a colloquial feel that may surprise some people.

So how to choose between these two very excellent works of reference? I like them both and if I had to part with either, I would reluctantly let the Oxford go. However if I were English I would part with Bartlett's and keep the Oxford. I really think they are that close in quality. For a secondary consideration, I would prefer the Oxford since its slightly smaller size is a bit handier, especially when balanced on one's chest as one reads in bed!

Bottom line: no serious writer (especially of literature, culture and history) should be without either this or Bartlett's. Next to a dictionary a book of quotations is my most consulted work of reference. To solve the dilemma, I recommend that you splurge and get them both!

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A Comprehensive Quotation Collection 9 Feb 2001
Format:Hardcover
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is as comprehensive a dictionary of quotations as anybody could want. It covers all topics imaginable from war and peace to love and sex. All famous quotations and hundreds of not so famous quotations are included. There is a quotation, both serious or witty, to cover any subject a person may be writing or talking about. This is a book that you will refer back to again and again. I have even found myself looking up quotations and reading them just for fun.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
5.0 out of 5 stars Dictionary of Quotations 16 Jan 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Although its an older edition we just love this copy of "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations", Its in really good condition too and all for about £2 with free post and packing, Amazing value, thank you.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?   Let us know
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 

Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums


Listmania!


Look for similar items by category


Feedback