Quotation

in Dexter

—

—

75LBW

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Plato

76eto 0053

—

—

77SWQ

The Train Now Standing at Platform One

—

78LSW 359 Prelude

Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, V

78LSW 364 c01

We’ll get excited with Ring seat (10)

Clue from a Ximenes crossword puzzle

78LSW 367 c02

A man is little use when his wife is a widow.

Proverb, Scottish

78LSW 371 c03

As far as I could see there was no connection between them beyond the tenuous nexus of succession.

Champkin, Peter

78LSW 374 c04

She turned away, but with the autumn weather,
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours.

Eliot, T. S., La Figlia Che Piange

78LSW 380 c05

He certainly has a great deal of fancy, and a very good memory; but, with a perverse ingenuity, he employs these qualities as no other person does.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

78LSW 386 c06

And French she spak ful faire and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For French of Paris was to hir unknowe.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales

78LSW 393 c07

Gypsy Rose Lee, the strip-tease artist, has arrived in Hollywood with twelve empty trunks.

Wade, Harry P., American Columnist

78LSW 401 c08

We hear, for instance, of a comprehensive school in Connecticut where teachers have three pads of coloured paper, pink, blue and green, which are handed out to pupils as authority to visit respectively the headmaster, the office or the lavatory.

Davis, Robin, The Grammar School

78LSW 411 c09

Not a line of her writing have I,
Not a thread of her hair.

Hardy, Thomas, Thoughts of Phena

78LSW 416 c10

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.

Wilde, Oscar

78LSW 421 c11

Even the dustbin lid is raised mechanically
At the very last moment
You could dispose of a corpse like this
Without giving the least offence

Enright, D. J.

78LSW 423 c12

Man kann der Wald nicht vor Bäumen sehen.

Proverb, German

78LSW 427 c13

I am a man under authority.[1]

bn Mathew, 8:9

78LSW 433 c14

‘Tis a strange thing, Sam, that among us people can’t agree the whole week because they go different ways upon Sundays.

Farquhar, George

78LSW 437 c15

They wish to know the family secrets and to be feared accordingly.

Juvenal, Satire III, 113

78LSW 442 c16

And all the woe that moved him so
That he he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
ÛFor he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die

Wilde, Oscar, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

78LSW 453 c17

In philological works … a dagger † signifies an obsolete word. The same sign, placed before a person’s name, signifies deceased.

Rules for Compositors and Readers, OUP

78LSW 456 c18

One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill.

Gray, Thomas, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

78LSW 459 c19

Alibi (L. alibi, elsewhere, orig. locative — alius, other); the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the material time.

Oxford English Dictionary

78LSW 465 c20

John and Mary are each given 20p
John gives 1p to Mary
How much more does Mary have than John?

Problem set in the 11+ examination

78LSW 470 c21

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Kierkegaard, Sǿren

78LSW 474 c22

For having considered God and himself
he will consider his neighbour.

Smart, Geoffrey, My Cat Jeoffrey

78LSW 479 c23

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller
Knocking on the moonlit door.

de la Mare, Walter, The Listeners

78LSW 482 c24

For oily or spotty skin, first cleanse face and throat, then pat with hot towel. Smooth on an even layer of luxurious ‘Ladypak’, avoiding the area immediately around the eyes.

Directions for applying a beauty mask

78LSW 489 c25

Merely corroborative detail, to add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

Gilbert, W. S., The Mikado

78LSW 492 c26

All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Tolstoy, Leo [Anna Karenina]

78LSW 497 c27

An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own

Shakespeare, As You Like It

78LSW 499 c28

Incest is only relatively boring.

Inscription on the lavatory wall of an Oxford pub

78LSW 502 c29

Money often costs too much.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

78LSW 507 c30

To you, Lord Governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain —
The time, the place, the torture. O enforce it!

Shakespeare, Othello, V

78LSW 509 c31

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Conan Doyle, A. The Sign of Four

78LSW 515 c32

She’ll be wearing silk pyjamas when she comes.

Popular song

78LSW 517 c33

Things are not always what they seem;
the first appearance deceives many

Phaedrus

78LSW 524 c34

‘Now, listen, you young limb,’ whispered Sikes. ‘Go softly up the steps straight afore you, and along the little hall, to the street door: unfasten it, and let us in.’

Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist

78LSW 527 c35

No one does anything from a single motive.

Coleridge, S. T., Biographia Litteraria

78LSW 530 c36

The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day
Is crept into the bosom of the sea.

Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

78LSW 538 c37

And then there were two.

Ten Little Nigger Boys

78LSW 543 c38

The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the one before.

Chesterton, G. K.

78LSW 547 c39

For she and I were long acquainted
And I knew all her ways.

Housman, A. E., Last Poems

78LSW 550 c40

Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?

bn John 18

78LSW 556 c41

I came fairly to kill him honestly.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Little French Lawyer

78LSW 561 c42

There are tears of things and mortal matters touch the heart

Virgil, Aeneid I

78LSW 563 Epilogue

—

—

79SAD

And I wonder how they should have been together

Eliot, T. S., La Figlia Che Piange

81DOJ 001 Prologue

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

bn Luke 10:30

81DOJ 019 b1c01

Towards the door we never opened

Eliot, T. S., Four Quartets [2]

81DOJ 028 b1c02

We saw a knotted pendulum, a noose: and a strangled woman swinging there.

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

81DOJ 037 b1c03

I lay me down and slumber
And every morn revive.
Whose is the night-long breathing
That keeps a man alive?

Housman, A. E., More Poems

81DOJ 046 b1c04

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Thoreau, Henry

81DOJ 053 b1c05

Sad instrument of all our woe

Milton, Paradise Lost

81DOJ 060 b1c06

I say, ‘Banish bridge’; let’s find some pleasanter way of being miserable together.

Herold, Don

81DOJ 069 b1c07

For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

Wilde, Oscar, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

81DOJ 075 b1c08

Suicide is the worst form of murder, because it leaves no opportunity for repentance.

Collins, John

81DOJ 082 b1c09

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing II, iii

81DOJ 089 b2c10

He can’t write, nor read writing from his cradle, please your honour; but he can make his mark equal to another, sir.

Edgeworth, Maria, Love and Law

81DOJ 094 b2c11

Sophocles lived through a cycle of events spatially narrow, no doubt, in the scale of national and global history, but without parallel in intensity of action and emotion.

Introduction to Sophocles, From the, The Theban Plays, Penguin Classics

81DOJ 099 b2c12

Sit Pax in Valle Thamesis

Motto of Thames Valley Police Authority

81DOJ 106 b2c13

Chaos preceded Cosmos, and it is to Chaos without form and void that we have plunged.

Lowes, John Livingston, The Road to Xanadu

81DOJ 111 b2c14

Well, time cures heaqrs of tenderness, and now I can let her go.

Hardy, Thomas, Wessex Heights

81DOJ 118 b2c15

The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there.

Housman, A. E., A Shropshire Lad

81DOJ 125 b2c16

Go on; I’ll follow thee.

Shakespeare, Hamlet I, iv

81DOJ 131 b2c17

An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar

Twain, Mark, Private History of a Campaign that Failed

81DOJ 136 b2c18

Alibi: (L. ‘alibi’, elsewhere); the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the material time.

Oxford English Dictionary

81DOJ 147 b2c19

Certum est quia impossibile est.

Tertullian, De Carne Christi

81DOJ 152 b2c20

I have already chose my officer.

Shakespeare, Othello I, i

81DOJ 157 b2c21

Those milk-paps
That through the window-bars bore at men’s eyes

Shakespeare, Timon of Athens IV, iii

81DOJ 165 b3c22

And he made him a coat of many colours

bo Genesis, 37:3

81DOJ 173 b3c23

Some falsehood mingles with all truth

Longfellow, The Golden Legend

81DOJ 182 b3c24

The life of a man without letters is death.

Cicero

81DOJ 187 b3c25

Some clues are of the ‘hidden’ variety, where the letters of the word are in fron of the solver in the right order.

Macnutt, D. S., Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword

81DOJ 194 b3c26

The time is out of joint

Shakespeare, Hamlet I, v

81DOJ 202 b3c27

If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua

81DOJ 208 b3c28

And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.

bo Genesis, 25:28

81DOJ 216 b3c29

An illiterate candidate gives his thoughts. The spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure are chaotic. Examiners should feel no reluctance about giving no marks for such work.

Specimen Essays at 16+, Extract from

81DOJ 221 b3c30

She sat down and wrote on the four pages of a note-sheet a succint narrative of those events.

Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the d’Urbervilles

81DOJ 227 b3c31

A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine.

Shaw, G. B.

81DOJ 232 b3c32

What shall be the maiden’s fate?
Who shall be the maiden’s mate?

Scott, Sir Walter, The Lady of the Last Minstrel

81DOJ 241 b4c33

The great advantage of a hotel is that it’s a refuge from home life.

Shaw, G. B.

81DOJ 253 b4c34

Sir: (n.) a word of respect (or disapprobation) used in addressing a man.

Chambers Twentieth-Century Dictionary

81DOJ 260 b4c35

A vauntour and a lyere, al is one.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, Troylus and Criseyde

81DOJ 269 b4c36

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky

Wilde, Oscar, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

81DOJ 277 b4c37

Fingerprints are left at the scenes of crime often enough to put ober 10,000 individual prints in the FBI files. Even the craftiest of perpetrators sometimes forget to wipe up everywhere.

Murder Ink

81DOJ 285 b4c38

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Housman, A. E., Last Poems

81DOJ 292 b4c39

‘I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life.’

Johnson, Samuel, as reported by Boswell in Tour to the Hebrides

81lbm 097

[summaries]

—

84RTM

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

bn Matthew 5:41

84RTM 187

In which a veteran of the El Alamein offensive finds cause to recall the most tragic day of his life.

—

84RTM 189 c01

We are in the University of Oxford, at the marks-meeting of the seven examiners appointed for ‘Greats’.

—

84RTM 193 c02

In which we learn of an Oxford don’s invitation to view the vice and viciousness of life in a notorious area of the metropolis.

—

84RTM 195 c03

In which we have tantalising glimpse of high-class harlotry.

—

84RTM 203 c04

A woman of somewhat dubious morals seeks to relax, although such is her nature that she recalls too clearly, and too often, the duties she has been paid so handsomely to perform.

—

84RTM 210 c05

In which the Master of Lonsdale is somewhat indiscreet to a police inspector, and discusses his concern for one of his colleagues, and for the niceties of English grammar.

—

84RTM 214 c06

In which those readers impatiently waiting to encounter the first corpse will not be disappointed, and in which interesting light is thrown on the character of the detective, Morse.

—

84RTM 219 c07

The necrophobic Morse reluctantly surveys a corpse, and converses with a cynical and ageing police-surgeon.

—

84RTM 225 c08

In which Morse’s mind drifts elsewhere as the police-surgeon enunciates some of the sientific principles concerning immersion in fluids.

—

84RTM 230 c09

In spite of his toothache, Morse begins his investigations with the reconstruction of a letter.

—

84RTM 234 c10

Wherein such diverse activities as dentistry, crossword-solving, and pike-angling make their appropriate contributions to Morse’s view of things.

—

84RTM 238 c11

A brief interlude in which Sergeant Lewis takes his forst steps into the Examination Schools, the Moloch of Oxford’s testing apparatus.

—

84RTM 244 c12

Quite fortuitously, Morse lights upon a set of college rooms which he had no original intention of visiting.

—

84RTM 246 c13

Preliminary investigations are now in full swing, and Morse appears unconcerned about the contradictory evidence that emerges.

—

84RTM 252 c14

From two sources, Morse gains valuable insight into the workings of the human mind, and specifically into the mind of Dr Browne-Smith of Lonsdale.

—

84RTM 256 c15

Lewis again finds himself the unsuspecting catalyst as Morse considers the course of the case so far.

—

84RTM 260 c16

Discussion of identity, and of death, leads the two detectives gradually nearer to the truth.

—

84RTM 265 c17

Morse decides to enjoy the hospitality of yet another member of Lonsdale’s top brass, whilst Lewis devotes himself to the donkey work.

—

84RTM 268 c18

Our two detectives have not yet quite finished with the implications of severe dismemberment.

—

84RTM 272 c19

An extremely brief envoi to the first part of the case.

—

84RTM 276 c20

Morse, having been put on the right track by the wrong clues, now finds his judgement almost wholly vindicated.

—

84RTM 279 c21

We have an exact transcript of the long letter, which was without salutation or subscription, studied by Chief Inspector Morse and by Sergeant Lewis, in the mid-morning of Monday, 28th July

—

84RTM 282 c22

Investigations proceed with a nominal line drawn down the middle of needful enquiries.

—

84RTM 287 c23

Morse appears to have a powerful effect on two women, one of whom he has never met.

—

84RTM 292 c24

Lewis retraces some of his steps, and makes some startling new discoveries.

—

84RTM 294 c25

Unable to get answer from the house in Cambridge Way, Morse now reflects upon his meeting with the manager of the Flamenco Topless Bar.

—

84RTM 298 c26

In which Morse views a luxury block of flats in central London, catching an enigmatic glimpse of one of its tenants and looking longer upon our second corpse.

—

84RTM 302 c27

Morse meets a remarkable woman, and learns another woman who might be more remarkable still.

—

84RTM 307 c28

All men, even those of a pessimistic nature, fall victim at certain points in their lives to the most extravagant of hopes.

—

84RTM 312 c29

In which ‘The Religion of the Second Mile’ is fully explained, and Moprse is preemptorily summoned to his superior.

—

84RTM 317 c30

Like some latter-day Pilgrim, one of the protagonists in this macabre case is determined to rid himself of his burden.

—

84RTM 323 c31

It is a characteristic of the british people that they complain about their railways. In this case, however, there appears little justification for such complaint.

—

84RTM 326 c32

Whose was the body found in the Thrupp canal? It becomes increasingly clear now that there are very few contenders remaining.

—

84RTM 329 c33

In which Morse and Lewis retrace their journey as far as the terminus of the first milestone.

—

84RTM 333 c34

Gently we journey along the second mile, which appears to Morse to be adequately posted.

—

84RTM 338 c35

We near the end, with two miles and four furlongs of the long and winding road now completed.

—

84RTM 342 c36

Morse almost completes his narrative of the main events — with a little help from his imaginative faculties.

—

84RTM 345 c37

The Third Milestone

—

84RTM 349 c38

A Premature Epilogue

—

84RTM 351 c39

The Final Discovery

—

84RTM 352 c40

The pomp of funerals has more regard to the vanity of the living than to the honour of the dead.

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

86SA3 005 c01

‘Nobody ever notices postmen, somehow,’ said he thoughtfully; ‘yet they have passions like other men.’

Chesterton, G. K. The Invisible Man [3]

86SA3 008 c02

‘I have finished another year,’ said God,
‘In grey, green, white, and brown;
I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,
Sealed up the worm within the clod,
And let the last sun down.’

Hardy, Thomas, New Year’s Eve

86SA3 014 c03

The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.

Howe, E. W., Country Town Sayings

86SA3 019 c04

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, and disregard of all the rules.

Orwell, George, Shooting an Elephant

86SA3 024 c05

Beware of enterprises that require fancy clothes.

86SA3 028 c06

But if he finds you and you find him,
The rest of the world don’t matter;
For the Thousandth Man will sink or swim
With you in any water.

Kipling, Rudyard, ‘The Thousandth Man’

86SA3 034 c07

I therefore come before you armed with the delusions of adequacy with which so many of us equip ourselves.

Button, A. D., Air Vice-Marshal

86SA3 036 c08

The great advantage of a hotel is that it’s a refuge from home life.

Shaw, G. B.

86SA3 041 c09

He was once a doctor but is now an undertaker; and what he does a an undertaker he used to do as a doctor.

Martial

86SA3 047 c10

When I drink, I think; and when I think, I drink.

Rabelais

86SA3 051 c11

Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon.

Hardy, Thomas

86SA3 053 c12

Snow is all right while it is snowing: it is like inebriation, because it is very pleasing when it is coming, but very unpleasing when it is going.

Nash, Ogden

86SA3 056 c13

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

de la Mare, Walter, ‘The Listeners’

86SA3 062 c14

Even in civilized mankind, faint traces of a monogamic instinct can sometimes be percieved.

Russell, Bertram

86SA3 069 c15

And he that seeketh findeth.[4]

bn Matthew 7:8

86SA3 072 c16

Aspern Williams wanted to touch the skin of the daughter, thinking her beautiful, by which I mean separate and to be joined.

Champkin, Peter, The Waking Life of Aspern Williams

86SA3 077 c17

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

Parker, Dorothy

86SA3 083 c18

Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.

bo Song of Solomon 8:6

86SA3 088 c19

There is a kind of release
And a kind of torment in every goodbye for every man.

Lewis, C. Day

86SA3 092 c20

As when heaved anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to shore
Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.

Keats, John

86SA3 096 c21

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

Thurber, James

86SA3 098 c22

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky — or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again and see how it comes out this time.

Sandburg, Carl, Complete Poems

86SA3 102 c23

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table thatn when his wife talks Greek.

Johnson, Samuel

86SA3 106 c24

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

Frost, Robert

86SA3 109 c25

The cruellest lies are often told in silence.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

86SA3 112 c26

It is a bad plan that admits no modification.

Syrus, Publilius

86SA3 117 c27

What is the use of running when we are not on the right road?

Proverb, German

86SA3 121 c28

The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.

Hazlitt, William

86SA3 124 c29

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple.

bn Matthew 4:5

86SA3 127 c30

Everything comes to him who waits — among other things, death.

Bradley, F. H.

86SA3 130 c31

Wordsworth recalls in ‘The Prelude’ how he was soothed by the sound of the Derwent winding amongs grassy holms.

Literary Landscapes of the British Isles

86SA3 134 c32

JACK (gravely): In a handbag,
LADY BRACKNELL: A handbag?

Wilde, Oscar

86SA3 139 c33

A certain document of the last importance has been purloined.

Poe, Edgar Allan

86SA3 142 c34

No words beyond a murmured ‘Good-evening’ ever passed between Hardy and Louisa Harding.

The Early Life of Thomas Hardy

86SA3 146 c35

If you once understand an author’s character, the comprehension of his writing becomes easy.

Longfellow

86SA3 149 c36

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —
Lean on a garden urn —
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair —

Eliot, T. S.[5]

86SA3 153 c37

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew):
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Kipling, Rudyard

86SA3 156 c38

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

Twain, Mark

86SA3 162 c39

Matrimony is a bargain, and somebody has to get the worst of the bargain.

Rowland, Helen

86SA3 170 c41

Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death.

Chase, Alexander

86SA3 172 c42

No mask like open truth to cover lies,
As to go naked is the best disguise.

Congreve, William

86SA3 174 c43

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

Virgil, Georgics

86SA3 179 c44

Alibi (n.) — the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the material time.

Chambers 20^th Century Dictionary

86SA3 c40

‘Hallo!’ growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it. ‘What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?’

Dickens, A Christmas Carol

87mgm 045

His friend and foil, the stolid Watson with whom he shares rooms in Baker Street, attends Holmes throughout most of his adventures.

The Oxford Companion to English Literature

89cmi 135

Thou hast committed —
Fornication; but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead

Marlowe, Christopher, The Jew of Malta

89WID 000

Thought depends absolutely on the stomach; but, in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.

Voltaire, in a letter to d’Alembert

89WID 001 c01

Do you know why we are more fair and just towards the dead? We are not obliged to them, we can take our time, we can fit in the paying of respects between a cocktail party and an affectionate mistress — in our spare time.

Camus, Albert, The Fall

89WID 009 c02

Flowers, writing materials, and books are always welcome gifts for patients; but if you wish to bring food or deink, do ask the Sister, and she will tell you what is advisable.

Oxford Health Authority, Handbook for Patients and Visitors

89WID 014 c03

My evening visitory, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo Journal

89WID 021 c04

This type of writing sometimes enjoys the lethean faculty of making those who read it forget to ask what it means, or indeed if it means anything very substantive.

Austin, Alfred, The Bridling of Pegasus

89WID 024 c05

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth the while.

Shaw, G. B., Back to Methuselah

89WID 030 c06

Style is the hallmark of a temperament stamped upon the material at hand.

Maurois, André, The Art of Writing

89WID 043 c08

What a convenient and delightful world is this world of books — if you bring to it not the obligations of the student, or look upon it as an opiate for idleness, but enter it rather with the enthusiasm of the adventurer.

Grayson, David, Adventures in Contentment

89WID 047 c09

A Proven Crime

—

89WID 050 c10

‘Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method.

Conan Doyle, A Case of Identity

89WID 058 c11

Th’ first thing to have in a libry is a shelf. Fr’m time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure. But th’ shelf is th’ main thing.

Dunne, Finley Peter, Mr Dooley Says

89WID 063 c12

Ah, fill the cup: — what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about the if To-day be sweet!

Fitzgerald, Edward, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

89WID 068 c13

Being in the land of the living was itself the survivor’s privilege, for so many of one’s peers — one’s broithers and sisters — had already fallen by the wayside, having died at birth, at infancy or childhood.

Porter, Roy & Dorothy, In Sickness and in Health

89WID 074 c14

A Protracted Trial

—

89WID 079 c15

At a hotel facing the sea at brighton, he ate a good breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade; then took a stroll round the town before returning to the station and boarding a train for Worthing.

Court Record of evidence given in the trial of Neville George Clevely heath, on the morning after the murder of Margery Gardner

89WID 085 c16

The detective novelist, as a class, hankers after complication and ingenuity, and is disposed to reject the obvious and acquit the accused if possible. He is uneasy until he has gone further and found some new and satisfying explanation of the problem.

Sayers, Dorothy L., The Murder of Julia Wallace

89WID 091 c17

A Pronounced Sentence

—

89WID 095 c18

We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

Keats, John, Letter to John Reynolds

89WID 100 c19

Those hateful persons called Original Researchers.

Barrie, J. M., My Lady Nicotine

89WID 104 c20

From the cradle to the coffin, underwear comes first.

Brecht, Bertold, The Threepenny Opera

89WID 108 c21

Don’t take action because of a name! A name is an uncertain thing, you can’t count on it!

Brecht, Bertold, A Man’s a Man

89WID 112 c22

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been, it is all lying in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Carlyle, Thomas

89WID 118 c23

Magnus Alexander corpora parvus erat (Even Alexander the Great didn’t measure up to the height-requirement of the Police Force)

Proverb, Latin

89WID 121 c24

Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.

Rochefoucauld, La, Maxims

89WID 126 c25

Now, there is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for a thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

Chesterton, G. K., The Napoleon of Notting Hill

89WID 132 c26

Imagination, that dost so abstract us
That we are not aware, not even when
A thousand trumpets sound about our ears!

Dante, Purgatorio

89WID 135 c27

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out and death’s the other.

Williams, Tennessee, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

89WID 141 c28

I think it frets the saints in heaven to see
How many desolate creatures on the earth
Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship
And social comfort, in a hospital.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Aurora Leigh

89WID 145 c29

Lente currite, noctis equi!
(Oh gallop slow, you horses of the night!)[6]

Ovid, Amores

89WID 147 c30

The second coastline is turned towards Spain and the west, and off it lies the island of Hibernia, which according to estimates is only half the size of Britain.[7]

Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico — on the geography of Ireland

89WID 153 c31

Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!

Scott, Sir Walter, Marmion

89WID 155 c32

Stet Difficilior Lectio
(Let the more difficult of the readings stand)

The principle applied commonly by editors faced with variant readings in ancient manuscripts

89WID 159 c33

Marauding lots have shot the moping owl:
The tower is silent ‘neath the wat’ry moon;
But Lady Porter, lately on the prowl
Will sell the place for pennies very soon.

Parrot, E. O., The Spectator

89WID 165 c34

A man’s learning dies with him; even his virtues fade out of remembrance; but the dividends on the stocks he bequeaths may serve to keep his memory green.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, The Professor at the Breakfast Table

89WID 175 c36

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don’t even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis.

Mille, Agnes de, The New York Times

89WID 179 c37

The very designation of the term ‘slum’ reflects a middle-class attitude to terrace-housing, where grand values are applied to humble situations.

Curl, James Stevens, The Erosion of Oxford

89WID 183 c38

And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.

Eliot, T. S., Little Gidding[8]

89WID 188 c39

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

Priest, Ivy Baker, Parade

89WID 194 c40

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media

89WID 198, Epilogue

Murder on the Oxford Canal. A Profligate Crew

—

89WID036 c07

Heap not on this mound
Roses that she loved so well;
Why bewilder her with roses
That she cannot see or smell?

Millay, Edna St Vincent, Epitaph

89WID170 c35

‘Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.’ (And as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland

91dad 081

Espied the god with gloomy soul
The prize that in the casket lay,
Who came with silent tread and stole
The jewel that was ours away.

Cooper, Lilian, 1904-1981

91JWO 000

It is not impossible to become bored in the presence of a mistress.

Stendhal

91JWO 003 p1c01

For the better cure of vice they think it necessary to study it, and the only efficient study is through practice.

Butler, Samuel

91JWO 006 p1c02

‘O come along, Mole, do!’ replied the Rat cheerfully, still plodding along.
‘Please stop, ratty!’ pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart. ‘You don’t understand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it.’

Grahame, Kenneth, The Wind in the Willows

91JWO 011 p1c03

‘The cockroach Blattella germanica,’ it was observed darkly in 1926, ‘was at one time recorded as present in the Randolph Hotel kitchen.

Morris, Jan, Oxford

91JWO 015 p1c04

All saints can do miralcles, but few can keep a hotel.

Twain, Mark, Notebook

91JWO 018 p1c05

There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.

Sterne, Laurence, A Sentimental Journey

91JWO 021 p1c06

Almost all modern architecture is farce.

Small, Diogenes (1797-1812), Reflections

91JWO 024 p1c07

Madame, appearing to imbibe gin and It in roughly equal measures, yet manages to exude rather more of the gin than of the ‘it’.

Sykes-Davies, Hugh, Obiter Dicta

91JWO 029 p1c08

Often I have wished myself dead, but well under my blanket, so that neither death nor man could hear me.

Lichtenberg, Georg

91JWO 034 p1c09

A foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Essays

91JWO 037 p1c10

History, n. A account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Bierce, Ambrose, The devil’s Dictionary

91JWO 040 p1c11

Water taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.

Twain, Mark

91JWO 045 p1c12

Solvitur ambulando (The problem is solved by walking around)

Proverb, Latin

91JWO 050 p1c13

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray

91JWO 053 p1c14

The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft a-gley,
And lea’e us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy

Burns, Robert, To a Mouse

91JWO 058 p1c15

As you go through, you see the great scientists, scholars, and statesmen; the thinkers, writers, actors, monarchs, and martyrs who are part of Oxford’s history. By pasing this doorway you have a glimpse of the people whom Oxford has moulded, and many of whom have, in their turn, gone on to help mould the world.

Jenkins, of Hillhead, Lord, The Oxford Story

91JWO 062 p1c16

Clever people seem not to feel the nature pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

Colby, Frank Moore

91JWO 067 p1c17

In the police-procedural, a a fair degree of realism is possible, but it cannot be pushed too far for fear that the book might be as dull as the actual days of a policeman.

Symons, Julian, Bloody Murder

91JWO 071 p1c18

At Oxford nude bathing was, and sometimes still is, indulged in, which used to cause mutual embarrassment when ladies passed by in boats.

Yurdan, Marilyn, Oxford: Town & Gown

91JWO 075 p1c19

The moon jellyfish
like a parachute in air
sways under the waves.

Swift, Basil, Collected Haiku

91JWO 079 p2c20

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.

Hardy, Thomas, A Broken Appointment

91JWO 083 p2c21

Duty is what one expects from others; it is not what one does one’s self.

Wilde, Oscar, A Woman of No Importance

91JWO 087 p2c22

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office

Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2

91JWO 090 p2c23

There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.

Twain, Mark, Following the Equator

91JWO 093 p2c24

Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely being "sent" to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

Ruskin, John, Modern Painters

91JWO 098 p2c25

Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?

Book of Common Prayer, Solemnization of Matrimony

91JWO 101 p2c26

It is a matter of regret that many low, mean suspicions turn out to be well founded.

Howe, Edgar Watson, Ventures in Common Sense

91JWO 106 p2c27

myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went

FitzGerald, Edward, The Rubaiyat

91JWO 109 p2c28

There are an awful lot of drunks about these days. It wouldn’t really surprise me if you turned out to be one yourself.

Amis, Martin, Other People

91JWO 112 p2c29

Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

Thurber, James, Lanterns and Lances

91JWO 117 p2c30

There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play.

Beerbohm, Max, Mainly on the Air

91JWO 122 p2c31

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses in order to justify his logic.

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

91JWO 126 p2c32

If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.

Chekhov

91JWO 129 p2c33

Thou hast committed—
Fornication; but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

Marlowe, Christopher, The Jew of Malta

91JWO 133 p2c34

Just a song at twilight
When the lights are low
And the flick’ring shadows
Softly come and go…

From the English Song Book

91JWO 139 p2c35

Their meetings made December June.

Tennyson

91JWO 143 p2c36

Sic, ne perdiderit, non cessat perdere lusor
(To recoup his losses, the gambler keeps on backing the losers.)[9]

Ovid, Ars Amatoria

91JWO 147 p2c37

The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:
Now spurs the lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn

Shakespeare, Macbeth

91JWO 150 p2c38

I feel like I done when Slippery Sun
Romped ‘ome a winner at 30 to 1

Herbert, A. P. "Derby Day"

91JWO 152 p2c39

He
That kills himself to avoid misery, fears it,
And, at the best, shows but a bastard valour.

Massinger, Philip, The Maid of Honour

91JWO 155 p2c40

Light thickens and the crow makes wing to
the rooky wood

Shakespeare, Macbeth

91JWO 160 p2c41

No one came
On the bare platform.

Thomas, Edward, Adlestrop

91JWO 164 p2c42

As usual he was offering explanations for what other people had not even noticed as problems.

Magee, Bryan, Aspects of Wagner

91JWO 168 p2c43

"When my noble and learned broither gives his Judgement, they’re to be let go free," said Krook, winking at us again. "And then," he added, whispering and grinning, "if that ever was to happen — which it won’t — the birds that have never been caged would kill ‘em."

Dickens, Bleak House

91JWO 172 p2c44

Perchance my too much questioning offends.

Dante, Purgatorio

91JWO 175 p2c45

I do love to note and to observe.

Jonson, Volpone

91JWO 178 p2c46

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong — as when you find a trout in the milk.

Thoreau, Henry, unpublished manuscript

91JWO 181 p2c47

Darkness is more productive of sublime ideas than light.

Burke, Edmund, On the Sublime and the Beautiful

91JWO 184 p2c48

Where water, warm or cool, is
Good for gout — at Aquae Sulis.

Graffito in the Pump Room, bath, c. 1760

91JWO 191 p3c49

During late visits to Stinsford in old age he would often visit the unmarked grave of Louisa Harding.

Hardy, Florence Emily, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy

91JWO 193 p3c50

At day’s end you came,
and like the evening sun,
left an afterglow.

Swift, Basil, Collected Haiku

91JWO 199 p3c51

Rigid, the skel76eton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway

91JWO 206 p3c52

And summed up so well that it came to far more
Than the Witnesses ever had said

Carroll. Lewis, The Barrister’s Dream

91JWO 210 p3c53

Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?

bn Luke, 15:8

91JWO 216 p3c54

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

91JWO 218 p3c55

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

Hardy, Thomas, "The Convergence of the Twain"

91JWO 224 p3c56

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

91JWO 228 p3c57

…that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathring flowrs
Her self a fairer Flowre by gloomie Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world…

Milton, John, Paradise Lost, Book IV.

91JWO 232 p3c58

Je ne regrettee rien

Song, French

91JWO 234 p3c59

Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.[10]

Catullus, Poem CI

91JWO 239 p3c60

Women sometimes forgive those who force an opportunity, never those who miss it.

Talleyrand

92mor 221

Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
(But what about the vigilantes? Who’s going to watch after them?)

Juvenal, Satires

92new 119

Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
here was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Kipling, Rudyard, The Way Through the Woods, from

92WTW 000

Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be whiter, yea whiter than snow.

bo Isaiah, 1:18

92WTW 001 Prolegomenon

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

92WTW 001 Prolegomenon

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.

Shaw, George Bernard

92WTW 004 c01

Mrs. Austin was well enough in 1804 to go with her husband and Jane for a holiday to Lyme Regis. here we hear Jane’s voice speaking once again in cheerful tones. She gives the news about lodgings and servants, about new acquaintances and walks on the Cobb, about some enjoyable sea bathing, about a ball at the local Assembly Rooms.

Cecil, David, A Portrait of Jane Austen

92WTW 008 c02

Have you noticed that life, real honest-to-goodness life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheriteances, happens almost exclusively in the newspapers?

Anouil, Jean, The Rehearsal

92WTW 012 c03

The morning is wiser than the evening.

Proverb, Russian

92WTW 019 c04

… and hence through life
Chasing chance-started friendships

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, "To the Revd. George Coleridge

92WTW 026 c06

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Bevan, Aneurin, quoted in The Observer, 3 April, 1960

92WTW 029 c07

And I wonder how they should have been together!

Eliot, T. S., La Figlia Che Piange

92WTW 035 c09

Mrs. Kidgerbury was the oldest inhabitant of kentish Town, I believe, who went out charing, but was too feebly to execute her conceptions of that art.

Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield

92WTW 042 c10

Nec scit qua sit iter
(He knows not which is the way to take)[11]

Ovid, Metamorphoses II

92WTW 045 c11

Sigh out a lamentable tale of things,
Done long ago, and ill done

Ford, John, The Lover’s Melancholy

92WTW 048 c12

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Johnson, Samuel, The Idler

92WTW 053 c13

Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Kipling, Rudyard, The Way Through the Woods

92WTW 057 c14

At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to break the bank of our answers.

Machado, Antonio, Juan de Mairena

92WTW 062 c15

Between 1871 and 1908 he published twenty volumes of verse, of little merit.

Drabble, Margaret, edited by, "Alfred Austin", The Oxford Companion to English Literature

92WTW 066 c 16

A "strange coincidence" to use a phrase
By which such things are settled now-a-days

Byron, Lord, Don Juan

92WTW 072 c18

I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.

Aldrich, Thomas, Leaves from a Notebook

92WTW 077 c19

When I complained of having dined at a splendid table without hearing one sentence worthy to be remembered, he [Dr. Johnson] said, "There is seldom any such conversation."

Boswell, James, The Life of Samuel Johnson

92WTW 081 c20

It is only the first bottle that is expensive.

Proverb, French

92WTW 084 c21

In a Definition-and Letter-Mixture3 puzzle, each clue consists of a sentence which contains a definition of the answer and a mixture of the letters.

Manley, Don, Chambers Crossword Manual

92WTW 091 c22

On another occasion he was considering how best to welcome the postman, for he brought news froma world outside ourselves. I and he agreed to stand behind the front door at the time of his arrival and to ask him certain questions. On that day, however, the postman did not come.

Champkin, Peter, The Sleeping Life of Aspern Williams

92WTW 096 c23

The Grantor leaves the guardianship of the Woodlands to the kindly sympathy of the University… The University will take all reasonable steps tpo preserve and maintain the woodlands and will use them for the instruction of suitable students and will provide facilities for research.

Extract from the deed under which Wytham Wood was acquired by the University of Oxford on 4 August 1942 as a gift from Colonel ffennell

92WTW 100 c24

For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

bn Luke, 24:28

92WTW 106 c25

Science is spectrum analysis: art is photosynthesis.

Kraus, Karl, Half Truths One and a Half Truths

92WTW 110 c26

It was a maxim with Foxey — our revered father, gentlemen — "Always suspect everybody."

Dickens, Charles, Old Curiosity Shop

92WTW 114 c27

Be it ever so humble there’s no place like home for sending one slowly crackers.

Small, Diogenes, Obiter Dicta

92WTW 118 c28

Every roof is agreeable to the eye, until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Experience

92WTW 125 c29

A man’s ben is his resting-place., but a woman’s is often her rack.

Thurber, James, Further Fables of Our Time

92WTW 131, c30

The background reveals the true being of the man or thing. If I do not possess the background, I make the man transparent, the thing transparent.

Jiménez, Juan, Selected Writings

92WTW 134 c31

And Apollo gave Sarpedon dead to be borne by swift companions, to Death and Sleep, twin brethren, who bore him through the air to Lycia, that broad and pleasant land.[12]

Homer, Iliad, xvi.

92WTW 140 c32

What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.

New York Herald Tribune, 15 June, 1960

92WTW 143 c33

The newly arrived resident in North Oxford is likely to find that although his next-door neighbour has a first-class degree from some prestigious university this man is not quite so clever as his wife.

Country Living, January 1992

92WTW 147 c34

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.

Britt, Steuart Henderson, New York Herald Tribune, 30 October, 1956

92WTW 151 c35

Nine tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.

Russell, Bertrand, Marriage and Morals

92WTW 155 c36

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrifying of those extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.

Poe, Edgar Allan, Tales of Mystery and Imagination

92WTW 161 c37

Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm.

Phillips, Sidney J., speech, July 1953

92WTW 164 c38

In a world in which duty and self-discipline have lost out to hedonism and self-satisfaction, there is nothing like closing your eyes and going with the flow. At least in a fantasy, it all ends happily ever after.