Oxford Classics Quotes

We get bored with everything, my angel, it's a law of nature: it's not my fault. ~ Laclos, Pierre Choderlos De

I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics. ~ Erik Larson

I'm actually with the classics in general in terms of understanding truth in an existential mode. Therefore, philosophy becomes more a way of life as opposed to simply a mode of discourse. ~ Cornel West

When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities. ~ Mark Billingham

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong. ~ Steven Pressfield

I don't read a lot of inspirational books for life. But for writing, I think the two best books are The War of Art and William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I read a lot of classics; ~ Donald Miller

The novel is about five students of classics who are studying with a classics professor, and they take the ideas of the things that they're learning from him a bit too seriously, with terrible consequences. ~ Donna Tartt

HERE'S HOW MY OXFORD DICTIONARY DEFINES IT: "The spasmodic utterance, facial distortion, shaking of the sides, etc., which form the instinctive impression of mirth." To me this sounds like the array of symptoms caused by a lethal virus, but it's actually a description of one of the best things life has to offer: laughter. With certain exceptions, the Joy Diet requires you to do it at least thirty times a day. ~ Martha N. Beck

Usually when I write lyrics I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of other stuff. Some of my favourite lyricists are like Lou Reed, kind of the classics - Bob Dylan and stuff like that. ~ Andrew VanWyngarden

... There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper, irresistible - magic to make the sanest man go mad. ~ Homer

Thinking is like exercise, it requires consistency and rigor. Like barbells in a weightlifting room, the classics force us to either put them down or exert our minds. They require us to think. ~ Oliver DeMille

Science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than the classics. ~ John B. S. Haldane

I don't believe fine young ladies enjoy themselves a bit more than we do, in spite of our burned hair, old gowns, one glove apiece, and tight slippers that sprain our ankles when we are silly enough to wear them. ~ Louisa May Alcott

I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints ... I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does. ~ Douglas Coupland

The classics tell us that, in relationships, the one between teacher and student comes second only to the one between parent and child. ~ Lisa See

Darling, when you're as old as I am, you cherish the very few musicals that have come your way that you know are great classics. You become their guardian. ~ Cameron Mackintosh

Now that I'm taking some time off from school, I've been reading a lot to make sure I don't forget everything. It's mostly classics and nonfiction accounts from actors, directors and writers from the '40s and '50s. ~ Fred Savage

12. Historians today rely on classics like Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Caesar's Gallic War, and Tacitus's Histories. The earliest copies we have for these date from 1,300, 900, and 700 years after the original writing, respectively, and there are eight extant copies of the first, ten of the second, and two of the third. In contrast, the earliest copy of Mark's gospel is dated at AD 130 (a century after the original writing), and there are 5,000 ancient Greek copies, along with nearly 20,000 Latin and other ancient manuscripts. The sheer volume of ancient manuscripts provides sufficient comparison between copies to provide an accurate reproduction of the original text. Ironically, a number of fashionable scholars attracted to the so-called gnostic gospels as an "alternative Christianity" have far fewer manuscripts, and the original writings cannot be dated any earlier than a century after the canonical Gospels. ~ Michael S. Horton

An even more important philosophical contact was with the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who began as my pupil and ended as my supplanter at both Oxford and Cambridge. He had intended to become an engineer and had gone to Manchester for that purpose. The training for an engineer required mathematics, and he was thus led to interest in the foundations of mathematics. He inquired at Manchester whether there was such a subject and whether anybody worked at it. They told him about me, and so he came to Cambridge. He was queer, and his notions seemed to me odd, so that for a whole term I could not make up my mind whether he was a man of genius or merely an eccentric. At the end of his first term at Cambridge he came to me and said: "Will you please tell me whether I am a complete idiot or not?" I replied, "My dear fellow, I don't know. Why are you asking me?" He said, "Because, if I am a complete idiot, I shall become an aeronaut; but, if not, I shall become a philosopher." I told him to write me something during the vacation on some philosophical subject and I would then tell him whether he was complete idiot or not. At the beginning of the following term he brought me the fulfillment of this suggestion. After reading only one sentence, I said to him: "No, you must not become an aeronaut." And he didn't.
The collected papers of Bertrand Russell: Last Philosophical Testament ~ Bertrand Russell

A classic is a classic for a reason. Let's try to create new classics. The idea of repeating ourselves drives me a little crazy. ~ Gina Prince-Bythewood

Just remember, Braithwaite. While you were learning to be a fool at Oxford I was learning to kill men. And I learned well. ~ Bernard Cornwell

This posture of skepticism towards the classics displays a profound misjudg- ment. For the great works of Western culture are remarkable for the dis- tance that they maintained from the norms and orthodoxies that gave birth to them. Only a very shallow reading of Chaucer or Shakespeare would see those writers as endorsing the societies in which they lived, or would over- look the far more important fact that their works hold mankind to the light of moral judgment, and examine, with all the love and all the pity that it calls for, the frailty of human nature. It is precisely the aspiration towards universal truth, towards a God's-eye perspective on the human condition, that is the hallmark of Western culture. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin I and II are classics. As a player he's very good in the studio, but I've never seen him play well live. He's sloppy. He plays like he's got a broken hand and he's two years old. If you put out a good album and play like a two year old, what's the purpose? ~ Eddie Van Halen

I got into New College, Oxford. The ethos was that you could work - or not. ~ Nigel Rees

The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men. ~ John Aubrey

Why is it necessary to everyone to read the classics? Shouldn't only specialists spend their time on these texts, with other people devoting their efforts to particular interests of their own? Actually, it is precisely because these works are intended for *all* that they have become classics. They have been tried and tested and deemed valuable for the general culture --- the way in which people live their lives. They have been found to enhance and elevate the consciousness of all sorts and conditions of people who study them, to lift their readers out of narrowness or provincialism into a wider vision of humanity. Further, they guard the truths of the human heart from the faddish half-truths of the day by straightening the mind and imagination and enabling their readers to judge for themselves. In a word, they lead those who will follow into a perception of the fullness and complexity of reality. ~ Louise Cowan

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring. ~ Robertson Davies

It is possible that the city of London was initially named for ravens or a raven-deity. According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language, the designation comes from "Londinium," a Romanized version of an earlier Celtic name. But the word closely resembles "Lugdunum," the Roman name for both the city of Lyon in France and Leiden in the Netherlands. That Roman name, in turn, was derived from the Celtic "Lugdon," which meant, literally, "hill, or town, of the god Lugh" or, alternatively, " ... of ravens." The site of Lyon was initially chosen for a town when a flock of ravens, avatars of the god, settled there. Whether or not "Lugdunum" was the origin of "London," ravens were important for inhabitants of Britain for both practical and religious reasons. ~ Boria Sax

I'm familiar with the myth, I'm merely surprised that a female
would be familiar with the classics."
"You must have a very limited experience with my sex," Alexandra
said, surprised. "My grandfather said most women are every bit as
intelligent as men."
She saw his eyes take on the sudden gleam of suppressed laughter
and assumed, mistakenly, that he was amused by her assessment of
female intelligence rather than her remark about his inexperience
with women. ~ Judith McNaught

To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life. ~ Edward Gibbon

I had a dream I was walking down the street and didn't have to hold anyone's hand ~ Kelly Oxford

I like classics but I always add a twist because I don't like to think of my clothes as classic. ~ Monique Lhuillier

A classic book is a book which generations of men, driven by various reasons, read with that same initial fervor and that same mysterious loyalty. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end. ~ Richard Strauss

Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself and who had need for a friend. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Somehow it seemed as if they couldn't have got through the day without that, for whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine. ~ Louisa May Alcott

I see that my presence is burdensome to you. Painful as it was for me to become convinced of it, I see that it is so and cannot be otherwise. I do not blame you, and God is my witness that, seeing you during your illness, I resolved with all my soul to forget everything that had been between us and start a new life. I do not repent and will never repent of what I have done; but I desired one thing - your good, the good of your soul - and now I see that I have not achieved it. Tell me yourself what will give you true happiness and peace in your soul. I give myself over entirely to your will and your sense of justice. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I like the classics! ~ Greg Kinnear

Oh, Jesus was taking the wheel! ~ Kelly Oxford

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write. ~ A.S. Byatt

Sorry, I thought I was just thinking that. ~ Kelly Oxford

Who was that lad they used to try to make me read at Oxford? Ship- Shop- Schopenhauer. That's the name. A grouch of the most pronounced description. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Up until now quantum entanglement has generally been considered limited to very small microscopic objects, such as subatomic particles, atoms, isolated molecules, and microscopic crystalline structures. In December 2011 a group of physicists from the University of Oxford, the National Research Council of Canada, and the National University of Singapore announced the successful quantum entanglement, using lasers, of oscillation patterns of atoms in two macroscopic (approximately 3 millimeters in size) diamonds at room temperature and separated by a distance of about 15 centimeters ~ Robert M. Schoch

Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to Ezra Stowbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the unprofitable isles of the sea; whatsoever Ezra does not know and sanction, that thing is heresy, worthless for knowing and wicked to consider. ~ Sinclair Lewis

I wanted draw the cartoon characters, and then it all started to make sense as I was watching these classics come back to the theater like Lady and the Tramp and so forth. If you want to animated the dog, you have to know where the ribcage is and the hip bone and all that. ~ Andreas Deja

On the whole, although Zuleika is shallow and vain, we don't blame her for her disastrous effect on Oxford because we perceive that the love she inspires is essentially narcissistic and has deep roots in the institution she has overwhelmed. It is a love of the unobtainable ideal - the paradox of self-fulfillment in self-destruction - which originates with Romanticism, with Byron and Shelley, and finds its apotheosis in the decadent pose of Wilde: his open self-love, yet self-destructive wantonness and preoccupation with death. ~ Sara Lodge

When dealing with the excessively rich and privileged, you've got your two basic approaches. One is to go in hard and deliberately working class. A regional accent is always a plus in this. Seawoll has been known to deploy a Mancunian dialect so impenetrable that members of Oasis would have needed subtitles, and graduate entries with double firsts from Oxford practise a credible Estuary in the mirror and drop their glottals with gay abandon when necessary.

That approach only works if the subject suffers from residual middle-class guilt – unfortunately the properly posh, the nouveau riche and senior legal professionals are rarely prey to such weaknesses. For them you have to go in obliquely and with maximum Downton Abbey.

Fortunately for us we have just the man. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

An Oxford degree or owning a successful business or a perfect looking body does NOT guarantee inner-happiness, peace of mind, self-love, and a loving relationship. ~ Maddy Malhotra

I'd hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someone who only needed an hour's extra tuition a week to become some kind of working-class prodigy. I wanted my hour a week to make the difference between a future addicted to heroin and a future studying English at Oxford. That was the sort of kid I wanted, and instead they'd given me someone whose chief interest was in eating fruit. I mean, what did he need to read for? There's an international symbol for the gents' toilets, and he could always get his mother to tell him what was on television. ~ Nick Hornby

The word "snobbery" came into use for the first time in England during 1820s. It was said to have derived from the habit of many Oxford and Cambridge colleges of writing sine nobilitate (without nobility) , or "s.nob", next to the names of the ordinary students on examinations lists in order to distinguish them from their aristocratic peers. In the word's earliest days, a snob was taken to mean someone without high status, but it quickly assumed its modern and almost diametrically opposed meaning: someone offended by a lack of high status in others, a person who believes in a flawless equations between social rank and human worth ~ Alain De Botton