University Of Oxford

"Steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us near to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection,—to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?—nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen."

"Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!"

"And that sweet City with her dreaming spires"

"Oxford is on the whole more attractive than Cambridge to the ordinary visitor; and the traveller is therefore recommended to visit Cambridge first, or to omit it altogether if he cannot visit both."

"The nonsense which was knocked out of [boys] at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge."

"I was not unpopular [at school]... It is Oxford that has made me insufferable."

"The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse,"

"I am constantly filled with admiration at this – at the way you can wander through a town like Oxford and in the space of a few hundred yards pass the home of Christopher Wren, the buildings where Halley found his comet and Boyle his first law, the track where Roger Banister ran the first sub-four minute mile, the meadow where Lewis Carroll strolled; or how you can stand on Snow's Hill at Windsor and see, in a single sweep, Windsor Castle, the playing fields of Eton, the churchyard where Gray wrote his 'Elegy,' the site The Merry Wives of Windsor was first performed. Can there anywhere on earth be, in such a modest span, a landscape more packed with centuries of busy, productive attainment?"

"If I had to do literary work of an absorbing character, Oxford is the last place in which I should attempt to do it."

"I speak not of this college or of that, but of the University as a whole; and, gentlemen, what a whole Oxford is!"

"[Blackadder is proving that Nurse Mary is a German spy]"

"No son of Oxford, and no lover of progress in education, would desire to destroy or impair the ancient character and traditions of Oxford University. We all of us cherish the atmosphere of broad and liberal culture which emanates from her halls and quadrangles, and which not even the fumes of a hundred laboratories ought ever to be allowed to extinguish. We all of us wish to retain Oxford as the stronghold and fortress of what is often described as the old learning."

"No reforms can be effected in Oxford, that no substantial advance in carrying out her work in the world can be made, that she cannot be expected to rise to the level of her great traditions, or her still greater opportunities, unless larger resources are placed at her disposal. It is for these resources that we appeal to-day; and we address that appeal first to old Oxford men, who will be guided by their pride in her traditions and their jealousy for her honour; and, secondly, to the large outside field, not necessarily possessing any Oxford connection, who, we hope, will see in this ancient and famous Institution, if revivified and re-endowed, a potent instrument for moulding the character and increasing the usefulness of the Anglo-Saxon race."

"I'm privileg'd to be very impertinent, being an Oxonian."

"To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College: they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life."

"The clever men at Oxford"

"You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university."

"Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls."

"At Oxford, as you know, we follow the Cambridge lead, sometimes with uncertain steps."

"I saw the spires of Oxford"

"I remember an acquaintance saying to me that "the Oriel Common Room stank of logic"."

"Anyone taking classics or history for the prestige is either at Oxford or stuck in 1909."

"From old foundations where the nation rears"

"Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that sort of place. They teach you to be a gentleman there. In the polytechnic they teach you to be an engineer or such like. See?"

"I can't see who's in the lead but it's either Oxford or Cambridge. [Commentary on the 1949 Boat Race, between Oxford and Cambridge...]"

"A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford."

"The King, observing with judicious eyes"

"Oxford is, and always has been, full of cliques, full of factions, and full of a particular non-social snobbiness."

"Being published by the Oxford University Press is rather like being married to a duchess: the honour is almost greater than the pleasure."