Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

This is the eighth edition of the book first published in 1941 and which of course is now online. At £30, it is excellent value with over 20,000 quotations from 3,700 authors. This edition adds 700 quotations and 200 authors. In addition to the editorial production explaining the new context, the history of the dictionary and the original introduction to the first edition by Bernard Darwin, written during the war. It was good to see French authors represented like La Rochefoucauld with quotations like 'hypocrisy is a tribute which vice pays to virtue' and 'one gives nothing so freely as advice'. John Kenneth Galbraith is represented by his definition of trickle-down theory – 'the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.' I would also like to have seen his excellent definition of forecasters consisting of two classes - those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know.'