The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (92 page)
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Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
1913–60
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
The Fall
(1956)
What is a rebel? A man who says no.
The Rebel
(1951)
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the State.
The Rebel
(1951)
What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport.
often quoted as "…I owe to football"
Herbert R. Lottman
Albert Camus
(1979)
1905–94
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Die Provinz der Menschen
(1973)
1770–1827
In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch
Is offering too little and asking too much.
The French are with equal advantage content,
So we clap on Dutch bottoms just twenty per cent.
dispatch, in cipher, to the English ambassador at the Hague, 31 January 1826
Sir Harry Poland
Mr Canning's Rhyming "Dispatch" to Sir Charles Bagot
(1905)
A steady patriot of the world alone,
The friend of every country but his own.
on the Jacobin
"New Morality" (1821) l. 113.
Give me the avowed, erect and manly foe;
Firm I can meet, perhaps return the blow;
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend.
"New Morality" (1821) l. 207
Pitt is to Addington
As London is to Paddington.
"The Oracle" (
c.
1803)
Away with the cant of "Measures not men"!—the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. If the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.
speech on the Army estimates, 8 December 1802, in
Speeches of…Canning
(1828) vol. 2; the phrase "measures not men" may be found as early as 1742 (in a letter from Chesterfield to Dr Chevenix, 6 March)
I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old.
speech on the affairs of Portugal, in House of Commons 12 December 1826
[The Whip's duty is] to make a House, and keep a House, and cheer the minister.
J. E. Ritchie
Modern Statesmen
(1861) ch. 7; attributed
1877–1912
Won't you come home Bill Bailey, won't you come home?
"Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home" (1902 song)
1966–
When seagulls follow a trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.
to the media at the end of a press conference, 31 March 1995
1913–54
If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.
Russell Miller
Magnum: Fifty years at the Front Line of History
(1997)
