J. Davidson - Planet Word

‘Wherever I turned my view’Samuel Johnson (1755 ), Preface to the English Dictionary, paras 1–50, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary , Penguin Classics, 2005

‘… to refine our language to grammatical purity’Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 208, 14 March 1752

‘To make dictionaries is dull work’; ‘lexicographer’Samuel Johnson, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary , Penguin Classics, 2005

‘I have protracted my work’Samuel Johnson (1755 ), Preface to the English Dictionary , Dr Johnson’s Dictionary , Penguin Classics, 2005

‘Dotard’; ‘embryo’; ‘envy’; ‘eavesdropper’; ‘or jogger’; ‘oats’; ‘excise’Samuel Johnson, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary , Penguin Classics, 2005

‘a wretched etymologist’Thomas Macaulay, quoted by Jesse Sheidlower in Defining Moment , Bookforum, October 2005

‘most truly contemptible performances’John Horne Took, quoted by Henry Hitchings, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World. John Murray, London, 2005

‘to the English speaking and English reading public’; ‘read books and make extracts for The Philological Society’s New English Dictionary’‘Dr Murray, Mill Hill, Middlesex, N.W.’ April 1879 Appeal, OED.com

‘a1548 Hall Chron., Hen. IV. (1550) 32b, Duryng whiche sickenes as Auctors write he caused his crowne to be set on the pillowe at his beddes heade’William Chester Minor, OED.com

‘It’s constantly moving. It’s fascinating’; ‘It’s rather nice’John Simpson, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘There’s an excitement about the cries and whispers and the solaces’Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word , 2011

‘Books are not absolutely dead things’John Milton, Areopagitica , Standard Publications, Inc., July 2008

‘was the first to have put together a collection of books’Strabo, quoted by Barbara Krasner-Khait in ‘Survivor: The History of the Library’, History magazine, October/November 2001

‘During Lent’Barbara Krasner-Khait, ‘Survivor: The History of the Library’, History magazine, October/November 2001

‘I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library’Bodleian Library oath.

‘some of those books so taken out by the Reformers were burnt’Anthony Wood, as quoted in ‘The History of The Bodleian ’ , bodleian.ox.ac.uk

‘set up my Staffe at the Librarie dore in Oxon’Thomas Bodley, as quoted by Jane Curran in ‘Looking back on Sir Thomas Bodley’, BBC Oxford, June 2009

‘We have staff whose job it is to keep stuff safe’Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘The politicians of today and tomorrow are communicating with their friends’Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘It’s always been part of what we see as “serving the whole republic of the learned” ’Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘Only he who has longed as I did for Saturdays to come’Andrew Carnegie, quoted in The New York Times obituary, 12 August 1919

‘I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the’Andrew Carnegie, as quoted in ‘The Andrew Carnegie Story’, carnegiebirthplace.com

‘Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait’Wilkie Collins as quoted by GW Dahlquist in ‘Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait’, Guardian , 6 January 2007

‘Is Little Nell dead?’Robert M.C. Jeffrey, Discovering Ton g : Its History, Myths and Curiosities, Robert Jeffrey, April 2007

‘I’m a great goose to have given way so, but I couldn’t help it’Lord Jeffrey, as quoted by Hattie Tyng Griswold, The Lives of Great Authors, A.C. McClurg and Company, Chicago, 1902

‘My taste is for the sensational novel’G. K. Chesterton, The Spice of Life and Other Essays , Darwen Finlayson, 1964

‘I am an author’Jakucho Setouchi, quoted by Dana Goodyear, ‘Letter from Japan, “I ♥ Novels” ’, The New Yorker , 22 December 2008

‘The book revolution which from the Renaissance on’John Updike, BookExpo America, 2006

‘Print is where words go to die’Jeff Jarvis, ‘Books will disappear. Print is where words go to die’, Guardian , 5 June 2006

‘One thing we’ve learned in the history of books’Professor Robert Darnton, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘I’m very attached to books and to manuscripts’ibid.

‘bring back that real book smell you miss so much’Smellofbooks.com

‘So we’re taking in history through the ear as well as through the eye’Professor Robert Darnton, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘atomic priesthood’Thomas A. Sebeok, ‘Technical Report’ prepared for Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation Battelle Memorial Institute, April 1984

‘People change, culture changes’John Lomberg, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘The other thing that seems to be universal is the notion of a storyboard’John Lomberg, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d,’Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Yale University Press, 1961

‘What, old dad dead?’Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Nick Hern Books, 1996

‘Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve into a dew!’William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1:2, 129–130, Penguin Classics, 2007

‘One might have expected natural selection’Professor Steven Pinker, Toward a Consilient Study of Literature, Philosophy and Literature , volume 31, Number 1, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007

‘When you talk about it, you think about it in the back of your head’Ernie Dingo, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘In the time before time began Bunjil’‘The Gariwerd Creation Story’ pamphlet

‘It’s both a rhyme and rhythm, and the rhythm is the heartbeat’Ernie Dingo, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven’Richmond Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer , Harper Collins, 1965, reissued by HarperPerennial 1991, book I, lines 1–10, p. 27

‘So they sang, in sweet utterance, and the heart within me desired to listen’ibid., book XII, lines 192–3, p. 190

‘Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage’Professor Stanley Lombardo, The Iliad , Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, book I, lines 1–6

‘in which the whole plot is done backwards and the story winds up in futility and unhappiness’Professor William Foster-Harris, The Basic Patterns of Plot, University of Oklahoma Press, new edition,1981

‘Plots of the body’; ‘plots of the mind’Ronald Tobias, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them , Walking Stick Press, March 2003

‘Nobody knows anything’William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade , Futura Publications, 1990