Oxford English Dictionary

“ The plain man or gentlewoman may write a letter in his or her natural language, and then by turning up the simple words in the dictionary alter them into their learned equivalents. Thus ‘abound’ may be altered into exuperate, ‘too great plenty’ into uberty, ‘he and I are of one age’ into we are coetaneous, ‘youthful babbling’ into juvenile inaniloquence—a useful expression to hurl at an opponent in the Oxford Union. ”

“ The light thrown by certain words on the social history of England, as opposed to her political history, [64] is a clear and often a new one. To look up in the Oxford Dictionary such words as blackguard, carol, club, morris, teetotal, or a thousand others which seem to have no particular historical significance, and to read through the many illustrative quotations, is to take a wonderfully easy and intimate peep into the past ”

“ Nevertheless, there is a common tendency in them, and in the university of Oxford, towards the belief that, to use the words of the editor, “We are free moral agents in a sense which cannot apply to what is merely natural.” There is indeed much more activity of thought at Oxford than the world suspects. ”

“ The first three were entitled respectively, 'Le Guichet Francois, sive Janicvla et Brevis Introductio ad Linguam Gallicam,' Oxford, 1604, 4to; 'A briefe extract of the former Latin Grammar, done into English for the easier instruction of the Learner,' Oxford, 1605, 4to (dedicated to William, son of Arthur, lord Grey de Wilton) ; 'A Grammar, or Introdvction to the Italian Tongue,' Oxford, 1605, 4to, containing a poem, 'Sur l'Autheur,' by Jean More (no copy at the British Museum) . ”

“ The learned in schools, where knowledge first began,
Studies with care the anatomy of man; 25
Sees virtue, vice, and passions, in their cause,
And fame from science, not from fortune, draws.
So poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearnèd pen 30
Could ne’er spell grammar, would be reading men. ”

“ The introductory sketch of Oxford in Johnson's time is admirably executed."—The Scotsman, August 8th, 1878.
"Every reader who would be fully informed about the period of English literature, and the men and women who then figured in society, must read Dr. ”

“ To the facile pen of an Oxford man we owe the production of the most popular manual of our history that has ever appeared, the Short History of the English People. To the Oxford Press and the labour's self-denyingly and generously tendered of hard-worked tutors we owe the translation of Ranke's History of England. ”

“ Now it is not too much to say that, for a University like Oxford to confer an honour degree in English Literature on a student who need never have read a line of the works to which we have referred, is to authorize not simply superficiality, but sheer imposture. ”

“ We have modified the common language far less than we have modified the common law. We have kept alive here many a word and many a meaning which was well worthy of preservation, and which our kin across the seas had permitted to perish. Professor Earle of Oxford, in his comprehensive volume on ‘English Prose,’ praises American authors for refreshing old words by novel combinations. ”

“ If one looks up any word in the Oxford Dictionary, one will be almost distressed to see how various the significations are to which it is authoritatively susceptible. A word seems to behave like an animal that goes skirting about discontentedly, in search of a more congenial habitation. ”

“ When on one occasion he ‘opposed’ at the philosophy act, he acquitted himself so well that the Oxford masters of arts who were present, finding him ‘facetiously solid,’ begged him to become a member of their university ”

“ Our old-world scholar may have ways to teach
Of Oxford English, Britain's purest speech,—
She shall be youngest,—youngest for to-day,—
Our dates we'll fix hereafter as we may;
All rights reserved,—the words we know so well,
That guard the claims of books which never sell. ”

“ As a professor he had great influence upon many generations of students of philosophy at Oxford. In his lectures he aimed not so much at the detailed exposition of philosophical systems as at exciting thought in his hearers. ”

“ Philosophy has long been at home in this University; in the remarkable development of English philosophical thought during the last five-and-thirty years Oxford has played a leading part; and I hope the time will never come when a son of hers will need to apologise to his brethren for talking philosophy. Besides, though I owe her gratitude for many gifts, and most for the friendships she gave me, her best intellectual gift was the conviction that what imagination loved as poetry reason might love as philosophy, and that in the end these are two ways of saying the same thing. ”

“ I have cut away at one stroke lectures, and Boards of Studies, and tutors' meetings, and all the rest of the wearisome Oxford make-believe, and the creature left behind feels lighter and nimbler than he has felt for years. ”

“ Not so much that time will have been wanting; but that the whole energy of the mind, and the main course of the subsidiary studies and researches, will naturally have been directed to those difficult languages amongst which lie their daily tasks. I make it no subject of complaint or scorn, therefore, but simply state it as a fact, that few or none of the Oxford undergraduates, with whom parity of standing threw me into collision at my first outset, knew anything at all of English literature. ”

“ In conclusion, we would express a hope that we shall not inaptly commence a series of OXFORD ENGLISH CLASSICS with the works of one whose writings have so enlarged and embellished the science of moral evidence, which has long constituted a characteristic feature in the literary discipline of this university. The science of mind and its progress, as recorded by history, or unfolded by biography, was Johnson's favourite study, and is still the main object of pursuit in the place whose system and institutions he so warmly praised, and to which he ever professed himself so deeply indebted. ”

“ Learn these neuters nine by rote,”
in the twentieth century, seems to help the harassed student along the linguistic path. The reading of Virgil and Statius and some other writers put flesh upon these grammatical dry bones. But as the masters of grammar at Oxford were expected to be guardians of morals as well, they were expressly forbidden to read and expound to their pupils Ovid’s Ars amandi, the Elegies of Pamphilus, and other indecent books. ”

“ The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford is a Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit out of both. The reading-men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the examination, do no work, but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college doomsday. ”

“ He now visited the university of Oxford, and, with the consent of the regent and non-regent masters, solemnly condemned various erroneous opinions in grammar, logic, and natural philosophy that were then current in the university. ”

“ People who refer to “the Oxford Movement” imply that Oxford only moved once; and those quaint people who say that “A is quite the gentleman” imply both the doubtful proposition that there is only one gentleman in the world, and the indubitably false proposition that he is that man. ”

“ What a change might be wrought in our pulpits if lads at public schools were given some knowledge of our great writers from Chaucer and Wickliffe downwards, instead of wasting so much time on Latin verses, that do no good in after life to three-fourths of the students! A lad of average wit only needs sound English models to be set before him, and he will teach himself much. What good service might Oxford do if she were to establish yet another School, which would enforce a thorough knowledge of English, and would, moreover, teach her bantlings a new use of the Latin and Greek already learnt! ”

“ While in Cambridge the general application is turned altogether on speculative knowledge, with little regard to polite letters, taste, or style; in Oxford the whole attention is directed towards classical correctness, without any sound foundation laid in severe reasoning and philosophy. In Cambridge and in Oxford, the art of speaking agreeably is so far from being taught, that it is hardly talked or thought of. These defects naturally produce dry unaffecting compositions in the one ”

“ The worst of it is that they often return désillusionné. At first everything English is grand and perfect in their eyes, an Oxford degree is the highest goal of their ambition. But when they have 142obtained it, chiefly by learning by heart, they make very light of it. ”

“ He came to England at an early age, and was engaged for several years as a teacher of modern languages in the university of Oxford. He was also French master at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth. He was a good mathematician, and is stated (Gent. Mag.) to have spoken fluently 'nearly all the European languages,' and to have been 'well versed in Arabic, Latin, and Greek.' In 1818 he left Oxford with two university friends and visited the towns of northern Italy. ”

“ A comparison of the Oxford clerk of the fourteenth century, ascetic, other-worldly, sententious, immersed in scholastic logic, with some of the alert, yet philosophical, public men produced by the English universities of to-day, shows the line that academic evolution has followed during the intervening centuries. ”

“ The early part of the nineteenth century was not very prolific in the department of speculative thought, but signs of movement may be detected in the third decade. Each of the English universities became the centre of a very active intellectual society. The Cambridge men showed a bent towards general literature and philosophy, or to theology of a type cognate to philosophy. In the works of Whately Oxford gave signs of a philosophical revival ”

“ His lectures given in this capacity, and perhaps still more the stimulating assistance in their private work which he ungrudgingly afforded to his pupils, procured him a considerable reputation in the university as a teacher. In the fifties and sixties many of the best men in Oxford passed under his hands, and he gave a great impetus to the inductive study both of morals and psychology. ”

“ Oxford has always been a nursing-mother of polished satirists. Of a small sprig of aristocracy, who was an undergraduate in my time, it was said by a friend that he was like Euclid's definition of a point: he had no parts and no magnitude, but had position. ”

“ And to the darkest days of the eighteenth century belongs the most famous picture of the ideal Oxford life: "I spent many years, in that illustrious society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce of gentlemen and of scholars; in a society where emulation without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited industry and awakened genius; where a liberal pursuit of knowledge and a genuine freedom of thought was raised, encouraged, and pushed forward by example, by commendation, and by authority." ”

“ He was an old-fashioned humanist, rather than a philologer of the modern type. So too in social intercourse he was no scholastic recluse but a genial man of the world. His house at Oxford was the meeting place of a small but brilliant circle, who may not have been prominent in academical business, but who there sharpened one another's wits for the distinction they gained in the outer world. ”

“ The bulk of the signed entries are for poets (about 1,500, most from Great Britain and the United States) who were born before 1964 and lived anytime during the twentieth century. A typical entry includes critical commentary and a brief overview of the poet’s life, career, and publications. Entrants are indexed in Biography and Genealogy Master Index (J565) . Although readers will inevitably find omissions, this Oxford Companion is a useful basic desktop reference on twentieth-century English-language poetry. ”

“ Formerly, one appointed to write a satirical Latin poem at the public Acts in the University of Oxford; not unlike the prevaricator at Cambridge, Eng.—Webster.
Full accounts of the compositions written on these occasions may be found in a work in two volumes, entitled "Terræ-Filius; or the Secret History of the University of Oxford," printed in the year 1726.
See TRIPOS PAPER.
TESTAMUR. Latin; literally, we testify. In the English universities, a certificate of proficiency, without which a person is not able to take his degree. ”

“ There is a writer at Oxford University, one who writes bold truths in the most effective manner, who is doing it for the instruction of the next generation of statesmen - that is the Professor of History at Oxford. ”

“ And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection,--to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?--nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! ”