What is the Oxford Book of Quotations?

Maria Devenney: my new observe is >>Ratattitudinal

Marcelina Schossow: GossipHilton's wisdom put in book of quotationsWords of wisdom from Paris Hilton are to be immortalized alongside remarks by some of the greatest thinkers of all time in the latest edition of the 'Oxford Book of Quotations' -- and she reckons it's "so cool." Hilton, the socialite turned reality TV star and retailing phenomenon, is listed in the latest version of the 65-year-old dictionary, released this week, alongside the likes of Confucius, Oscar Wilde and Stephen Hawking.Her contribution? "Dress cute wherever you go, life is too short to blend in." Hilton, 28, was delighted to be featured in the book which is a renowned list of memorable sayings. "So cool that I have a quote in the dictionary," she wrote on her Twitter page. Another new entry in the seventh edition of the Oxford University Press publication is Sarah Palin.The former vice-presidential candidate makes the cut for her most famous! quip: "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."A drink or two raises car crash risk: StudyWatch out for that glass of wine at dinner or those two beers when celebrating your colleague's birthday after work if you're planning to drive. Italian research shows that having as little as one or two drinks within six hours before getting behind the wheel of a car increases the risk of being involved in an accident. "The increase in risk is significant already after 1-2 glasses," Dr. Stefano Di Bartolomeo said. Overall, drinking more than doubled the risk of a crash, the team reported in BioMed Central's journal Public Health. But sleep-deprived people -- meaning peole who had less sleep than usual over the last 24 hours -- were twice as likely to crash in the two hours after having a meal.The risk for drinking and sleep-deprivation combined was three-fold greater....Show more

Idell Mulliniks: The silent majority.

Karie Mavle: Publication of! the 6th edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (9 Sep! tember 2004) is a cause for celebration; it is also an appropriate moment to look back at the inception of what has become an iconic reference book.The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations was first published in 1941, and warmly welcomed (the Illustrated London News for 18 October 1941 saw it as "combining authority with charm"). It was a collection for its own time: a strongly literary content with a few frivolities (advertising slogans and popular songs), virtually no scientists, and a limited number of politicians (Winston Churchill, just emerging from his wilderness years, was represented by one quotation). But then as now, the Dictionary provided its readers with the answer to the tantalizing question, Who said that?Demand was such that the publishers had to struggle with wartime restrictions to get a reprint on to the market. This was a "constantly recurring trouble" of the time; a more individual difficulty arose with the famously litigious Lord Alfred Douglas.Lord Alfred! was distressed to find that he was represented in the Dictionary by a line ("the placid pug that paces in the park") from an early nonsense poem. Considering that this was an inadequate representation of his literary mastery, he complained to the Oxford Publisher, Humphrey Milford, who pointed out that the book was a collection of familiar quotations, rather than an anthology of authors. Milford explained further: "I see a pug (not often, thank Heaven, in these days) and I at once think of your line and so do many other people." Lord Alfred found this "singularly unconvincing", and the correspondence rumbled on. It is possible to feel some sympathy for the solicitor whose instructions forced him to write, "We are acting for Lord Alfred Douglas, who, as you must know, is one of the greatest living poets and has been so described by those best able to form an opinion and entitled to express it."The placid pug no longer paces through the pages of the Dictionary (the breed is ! represented only by the 19th-century child author Marjorie Fleming's ad! dress to a cherished pet "O lovely O most charming pug"), but the book's 20,000 quotations offer a rich and diverse blend of voices and sources from past and present. To mark the original publication, Bernard Darwin's Introduction to the First Edition of 1941 is reprinted in full, and the new Introduction gives a short history of the Dictionary (including the tale of the placid pug and the less than placid poet)....Show more

Marielle Hedeiros: Um..it's a book with selected quotations in. What is your question?It isn't "the new Bible". Nobody has ever said it was.