The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (409 page)

Sondheim, Stephen
1930–

1
I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev'rything free in America
For a small fee in America!

"America" (1957 song) in
West Side Story

2
Everything's coming up roses.

title of song (1959) in
Gypsy

3
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

"Send in the Clowns" (1973 song) in
A Little Night Music

 
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Sontag, Susan
1933–

1
Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its "victims".

AIDS and its Metaphors
(1989)

2
What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death.

in
Partisan Review
Spring 1967

 
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Soper, Donald
1903–98

1
It is, I think, good evidence of life after death.
on the quality of debate in the House of Lords

in
Listener
17 August 1978

 
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Sophocles
c.
496
bc

1
There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man.

Antigone
l. 333

2
Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.

Oedipus Coloneus
l. 1225 (translation by R. C. Jebb)

3
Someone asked Sophocles, "How is your sex-life now? Are you still able to have a woman?" He replied, "Hush, man; most gladly indeed am I rid of it all, as though I had escaped from a mad and savage master."

Plato
Republic
bk. 1, 329b

 
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Southey, Robert
1774–1843

1
Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for.

"The Battle of Blenheim" (1800)

2
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

"The Battle of Blenheim" (1800)

3
And then they knew the perilous rock,
And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothock.

"The Inchcape Rock" (1802)

4
My name is Death: the last best friend am I.

"The Lay of the Laureate" (1816) st. 87

5
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.

"The Old Man's Comforts" (1799).

6
The arts babblative and scribblative.

Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society
(1829) no. 10, pt. 2

7
Men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend.
on the death of Nelson

The Life of Nelson
(1813) ch. 9

8
She has made me in love with a cold climate, and frost and snow, with a northern moonlight.
on Mary Wollstonecraft's letters from Sweden and Norway

letter to his brother Thomas, 28 April 1797.

9
Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life: and it ought not to be.

letter to Charlotte Brontë, 12 March 1837

 
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