The Professor And The Madman: A Tale Of Murder, Insanity And The Making Of The Oxford English Dictionary Quotes
"Full of or fraught with mystery; wrapt in mystery; hidden from human knowledge or understanding; impossible or difficult to explain, solve, or discover; of obscure origin, nature, or purpose."
"Nihil est melius quam vita diligentissima" (Nothing is better than a most diligent life).
"It seemed as though Christian men had turned to fiends, and hell itself had usurped the place of earth."
"The word has not been found in any Teut. lang. but Eng. and Gothic, but that it existed in continental WGer. is evident, as it is the source of OF. murdre, murtre (mod. F. meurtre) and of med. L. mordrum, murdrum, and OHG. had the derivative murdren MURDER v."
"In Victorian London, even in a place as louche and notoriously crime-ridden as Lambeth Marsh, the sound of gunshots was a rare event indeed."
"The armed criminal was a phenomenon little known in the Lambeth of Prime Minister Gladstone’s day."
"The light estimation in which human life is held by Americans may be noted as one of the most significant points of difference between them and Englishmen."
"There are many such critics, and with the book being such a large and immobile target there will no doubt be many more."
"Living actors have to learn that they too must be invisible while the protagonists are conversing, and therefore must not move a muscle nor change their expression."
"Words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven."
"A dictionary is simply an inventory of the language."
"The language should be accorded just the same dignity and respect as those other standards that science was then also defining."
"A dictionary should be a record of all words that enjoy any recognized life span in the standard language."
"A dictionary was to be based on the historical principles that were the only truly valid ones."
"It was an essential credo for any future dictionary maker to realize that a dictionary was simply an inventory of the language."
"The lexicographer was an historian, not a critic."
"A dictionary should not be an absolutist, autocratic product."
"It is important to know just when the word was born, to have a record of the register of its birth."
"The heart of such a dictionary should be the history of the life span of each word."
"It was then standard Broadmoor practice never again to ask about the crime."
"Life, which in those first months had been at least tolerable, now started to become really quite agreeable."
"His cells still exist—not much at Broadmoor has changed in a century."
"His spinal marrow is pierced and his heart is operated on with instruments of torture."
"He is rational and intelligent for the most part."
"All systems are based on schemes of corruption and knavery."
"He talks very coherently and intelligently on most topics."
"He would now be able to occupy his time constructively."
"He has the calm and firm conviction that he is almost nightly the victim of torment and purposive annoyance."
"He was a doctor, of course, and so knew roughly what he was doing."
"Murray could not help noticing, for instance, that Minor’s cell floor had been covered with a sheet of zinc."
"It was not his place to regard the old man with anything other than sad affection."
"The elegance of his language convinced no one."
"His mind, though tortured, had always been peculiarly acute."
"The problem had been solved: The Deity would be satisfied that no further sexual rompings could take place."
"A truly savage irony, on which it is discomfiting to dwell."
"A patient may have a simple genetic predisposition to the illness."
"His own feelings were more negative still: Since the laws of nature could quite satisfactorily explain all natural phenomena, he would write, he could not find any logical need for the existence of a God."