Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations Quotes

If we take the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as our guide, then Shakespeare produced roughly one-tenth of all the most quotable utterances written or spoken in English since its inception—a clearly remarkable proportion.

The lonely drudgery of lexicography, the terrible undertow of words against which men like Murray and Minor had so ably struggled and stood, now had at least it's great reward. Twelve mighty volumes; 414,825 words defined; 1,827,306 illustrative quotations used, to which William Minor alone had contributed scores of thousands.

Art has become an individual statement and, for the artist himself, a means whereby he can pursue his own self-realization. Autobiography developed from the confessional. St Augustine provided the model in his Confessions. However, the word ‘autobiography’ was not introduced until much later. A quotation from Southey dated 1809 is the first example of the word’s use given by the Oxford English Dictionary. Over the centuries, autobiography changed from being a narrative of the soul’s relation with God to an enterprise far more like that of psycho-analysis. In recounting the circumstances of his life from childhood onward, the autobiographer sought to define the influences which had shaped his character, to portray the relationships which had most affected him, to reveal the motives which had impelled him. In other words, the autobiographer became a writer who was attempting to make a coherent narrative out of his life, and, in the process of doing so, hoping perhaps to discover its meaning. The modern psycho-analyst is concerned to make coherent sense out of his patient’s life-story in much the same way.

None of his neighbours knew that Mr Collier volunteered for the OED nor that words from their local newspapers would eventually find their way onto its authoritative pages. Thanks to his work, there is a weird bias in the OED towards quotations from the Brisbane Courier Mail. It is now the three-hundred-and-ninetieth-most frequently quoted source in the Dictionary, with more quotations from it than from either Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, or the Book of Common Prayer.