Oxford Quotes - Page 5

• Physick, says Sydenham, is not to bee learned by going to Universities, but hee is for taking apprentices; and says one had as good send a man to Oxford to learn shoemaking as practising physick.

  Thomas Sydenham

  Learning, Science, Men

  Thomas Sydenham, Kenneth Dewhurst (1966). “Dr. Thomas Sydenham, 1624-1689: His Life and Original Writings”

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• It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air. ... spreading DNA whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds. ... It is raining instructions out there; it's raining programs; it's raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn't be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs.

  Richard Dawkins

  Rain, Character, Garden

  "The Blind Watchmaker". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1986.

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• I was cleaning out the pigsty at a farm in Wales, where my mother had rented a room, when the results of my final school exam were handed to me by the postman, along with the news that I had a state scholarship to Oxford. I had waited for this letter for so many weeks that I had abandoned hope, deciding that I had failed ignominiously.

  Nina Bawden

  Mother, School, Finals

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• ...60 advocates of unorthodox therapies whose credentials are given in the ACS book (above).(:) Of these 60, thirty-nine or almost two-thirds, hold...medical degrees from such universities as Harvard, Illinois, Northwestern, Yale, Dublin, Oxford, or Toronto. Two are osteopaths. 3...also hold...(PhD's)....scientific....reputable....8 others received PhD's in such fields as chemistry, physiology, bacteriology, parasitology, or medical physics, from...Yale, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, Columbia, and NYU. Thus over 75%...are medical doctors or doctors of philosophy in scientific areas.

  Ralph W. Moss

  Philosophy, Book, Dark

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• ...The two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.

  Oscar Wilde

  Father, Two, Prison

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.99, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• ...The peculiar air of Oxford-the air of liberty to care for the things of the mind assured and secured by machinery which is in itself a satisfaction to sense.

  Henry James

  Air, Mind, Liberty

  Henry James (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry James (Illustrated)”, p.11565, Delphi Classics

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• Every minister worthy of the name has to walk the line between prophetic vision and spiritual sustenance, between telling people the comforting things they want to hear and challenging them with the difficult things they need to hear. In Oxford, Daddy began to feel as though all the members wanted him to do was to marry them and bury them and stay away from their souls.

  Timothy B. Tyson

  Spiritual, Names, Daddy

  Timothy B. Tyson (2007). “Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story”, p.16, Broadway Books

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• No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools -- no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class -- no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life.

  Henry James

  Loyalty, Country, School

  'Hawthorne' (1879)

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• On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.

  William Safire

  Book, Yale, Editors

  "'To - Be' or Not 'To - Be'" by William Safire, www.nytimes.com. November 26, 2006.

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• I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.

  Nina Bawden

  Jobs, War, Auntie

  "Nina's wars" by Susanna Rustin, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2003.

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• I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.

  E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

  Education, Thinking, World

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• At Oxford University, the certainties of my atheist faith (and atheism is a faith) began to crumble

  Alister E. McGrath

  Atheist, Atheism, Certainty

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• I got into New College, Oxford. The ethos was that you could work - or not.

  Nigel Rees

  College, Ethos

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• The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.

  John Aubrey

  Religious, Writing, Men

  "John Aubrey and the realm of learning". Book by Michael Cyril William Hunter, Science History Publications, p. 122, 1975.

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• I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.

  G. H. Hardy

  Science, Past, Littles

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.148, Cambridge University Press

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• I had gone to Oxford to read music. I had done music all my life, but when I got to college I didn't want to do it anymore.

  Sophie Kinsella

  College, Gone, Done

  "Big ideas". Interview With Alice Wignall, www.theguardian.com. July 19, 2004.

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• I could, I think, quite easily have gone to Oxford. I got four good A levels, but my father's income was such that I wouldn't have got a grant, and he wouldn't let me go to university, and that was the end of it.

  Colin Baker

  Father, Thinking, Income

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• There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.

  Sydney Brenner

  Years, England, Difficult

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• My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

  Simon Callow

  Mother, Teacher, College

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• Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, then Oxford College in Minnesota, and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee, where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling, who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.

  Peter Agre

  Dad, College, Important

  "Nobel Laureate Peter Agre: From Aquaporins to Lutefisk". Interview with Steve Mirsky, www.scientificamerican.com. July 20, 2011.

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• I was educated at Bradfield College and Oxford, where I graduated in 1939.

  Martin Ryle

  College, Educated

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• Whenever I tell people I'm a misanthrope they react as though that's a bad thing, the idiots. I live in London, for God's sake. Have you walked down Oxford Street recently? Misanthropy's the only thing that gets you through it. It's not a personality flaw, it's a skill.

  Charlie Brooker

  Skills, People, Personality

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• The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

  Steven Pressfield

  Writing, Ancient, Cambridge

  Interview with Will Duquette, www.patheos.com. May 21, 2014.

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• I don't think RADA wanted me, actually. When I was at Oxford I had a boyfriend at Central [School of Speech and Drama] and it looked like the most fantastic life, but I think not going makes you more free. Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.

  Rosamund Pike

  Drama, School, Thinking

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• So, then, Oxford Street, stonyhearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Children, Tears, Orphan

  'Confessions of an English Opium Eater' (1822) pt. 1

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