Top 100 Quotes (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/100quotes/?view=uk)

Here are the top 100 quotes from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, as selected by the Oxford Dictionary team.

Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.
—Dean Acheson, 1962

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887

Man is by nature a political animal.
—Aristotle, 4th century BC

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
—Neil Armstrong, 1969

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
—Jane Austen, 1813

Revenge is a kind of wild justice.
—Francis Bacon, 1635

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.
—Irving Berlin, 1942

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they.
—Bernard of Chartres, 12th century

In the beginning was the Word.
—Bible (St John's Gospel)

Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
—William Blake, 1804–10

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre [It is magnificent, but it is not war].
—Pierre Bosquet, 1854

Reader, I married him.
—Charlotte Brontë, 1847

No coward soul is mine.
—Emily Brontë, 1846

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.
—Rupert Brooke, 1914

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1850

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
—Robert Browning, 1855

It's a great life if you don't weaken.
—John Buchan, 1919

It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph
—Edmund Burke (attributed, not found in his writings)

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley.
—Robert Burns, 1796

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
—Lord Byron, 1824

Veni, vidi, vici [I came, I saw, I conquered].
—Julius Caesar, 1st century BC

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
—Mrs Patrick Campbell, 1940

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gunpowder, Printing, and the Protestant Religion.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1838

The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.
—Lewis Carroll, 1872

After forty a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face, and stay sitting down.
—Barbara Cartland, 1993

Delenda est Carthago [Carthage must be destroyed].
—Cato the Elder, 3rd century BC

Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
—Edith Cavell, 1915

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
—Raymond Chandler, 1944

Let not poor Nelly starve.
—Charles II, 1685

He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, 14th century

The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
—Lord Chesterfield, on sex

When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything.
—G. K. Chesterton, 1936

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
—Winston Churchill, 1940

The sinews of war: unlimited money.
—Cicero, 1st century BC

War is nothing but the continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
—Karl von Clausewitz, 1832-4

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1816

Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast.
—William Congreve, 1697

Mad dogs and Englishmen Go out in the midday sun.
—Noël Coward, 1931

Variety's the very spice of life.
—William Cowper, 1785

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
—Stephen Decatur, 1816

Honey, I just forgot to duck.
—Jack Dempsey, 1926, having lost the World Heavyweight title

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
—Charles Dickens, 1859

Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1864

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
—John Donne, 1624

'Excellent,' I cried. 'Elementary,' said he.
—Arthur Conan Doyle; origin of the misquotation, 'Elementary, my dear Watson'.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied.
—John Dryden, 1681

The times they are a-changin'.
—Bob Dylan, 1964

Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.
—Arthur Eddington, 1944

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety nine per cent perspiration.
—Thomas Alva Edison, c.1903

E=mc².
—Albert Einstein, 1905 (usual form of his statement)

April is the cruellest month.
—T. S. Eliot, 1922

I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.
—Elizabeth I, 1588

I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.
—Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, 1940

There is no 'royal road' to geometry.
—Euclid, 4th century BC

Never give a sucker an even break.
—W. C. Fields, 1941

Shaken and not stirred.
—Ian Fleming, 1958

Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.
—Henry Ford, 1909

Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion.
—E. M. Forster, 1910

All that matters is love and work.
—Sigmund Freud, attributed

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by.
—Robert Frost, 1916

Nice work if you can get it, And you can get it if you try.
—Ira Gershwin, 1937

My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.
—Edward Gibbon, 1796

Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?
—Duke of Gloucester, 1805

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it is written on.
—Sam Goldwyn, 1974

Give me liberty, or give me death!
—Patrick Henry, 1775

Clear your mind of cant.
—Samuel Johnson, 1783

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.
—John Keats, 1818

Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961

 I have a dream.
—Martin Luther King, 1963

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
—Rudyard Kipling, 1910

Gentlemen prefer blondes.
—Anita Loos, 1925

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
—Christopher Marlowe, 1593

Fame is the spur.
—John Milton, 1638

England expects that every man will do his duty.
—Horatio Nelson, 1805

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
—Blaise Pascal, 1670

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.
—Alexander Pope, 1733

He would, wouldn't he?
—Mandy Rice-Davies, 1963

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933

O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive.
—Sir Walter Scott, 1808

 Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results
—Ernest Shackleton, 1916

To be, or not to be: that is the question.
—William Shakespeare, 1601

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819

Am I no a bonny fighter?
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842

The lady's not for turning.
—Margaret Thatcher, 1980

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy, 1875-7.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
—Mark Twain, 1897 (popular version)

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes [I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts].
—Virgil, 1st century BC

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
—Voltaire (actually a later summary of his attitude rather than his own words)

Publish and be damned.
—Duke of Wellington, c.1825

Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
—Mae West

To lose one parent...may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895

A week is a long time in politics
—Harold Wilson, c.1964

Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.
—P. G. Wodehouse, 1938

They think it's all over—it is now
—Kenneth Wolstenhome, closing moments of World Cup Final, 1966.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
—Virginia Woolf, 1929

Earth has not anything to show more fair.
—William Wordsworth, 1807

 Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 
—William Butler Yeats, 1899

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