The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (165 page)

Fitzgerald, Garret
1926–

1
Living in history is a bit like finding oneself in a shuttered mansion to which one has been brought blindfold, and trying to imagine what it might look like from the outside.

in
Irish Times
9 May 1998

 
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Fitzsimmons, Robert
1862–1917

1
The bigger they are, the further they have to fall.
prior to a fight

in
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
11 August 1900

 
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Flanagan, Bud
1896–1968

1
Underneath the Arches,
I dream my dreams away,
Underneath the Arches,
On cobble-stones I lay.

"Underneath the Arches" (1932 song)

 
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Flanders, Michael
1922–75 and
Swann, Donald
1923–94

1
Have Some Madeira, M'dear.

title of song (
c.
1956)

2
Mud! Mud! Glorious mud!
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.

"The Hippopotamus" (1952)

3
Eating people is wrong!

"The Reluctant Cannibal" (1956 song); adopted as the title of a novel (1959) by Malcolm Bradbury

 
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Flaubert, Gustave
1821–80

1
Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Madame Bovary
(1857) pt. 1, ch. 12 (translated by F. Steegmuller)

2
Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.

letter to Louise Colet, 14 August 1853

3
Style is life! It is the very life-blood of thought!

letter to Louise Colet, 7 September 1853

4
Books are made not like children but like pyramids…and they're just as useless! and they stay in the desert!…Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them.

letter to Ernest Feydeau, November/December 1857

 
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Flecker, James Elroy
1884–1915

1
West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides
I must go
Where the fleet of stars is anchored and the young
Star captains glow.

"The Dying Patriot" (1913)

2
The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea.

"The Gates of Damascus" (1913)

3
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

The Golden Journey to Samarkand
(1913) pt. 1, "Epilogue"

4
I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village which men still call Tyre,
With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep
For Famagusta and the hidden sun
That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire.

"Old Ships" (1915)

 
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