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This dictionary, which is a companion volume to the "Oxford Dictionary of Quotations", brings together over 10,000 quotations, proverbs, and phrases, in an easy to use browsable format. Over 350 diverse themes have been chosen, with the aim of covering as broad a range of topics as possible, for example, actors and acting, animals, bores and boredom, elections, food and drink, kissing, madness, the past, schools, science, taxes, virtue, the weather, and youth. A selection of chronologically arranged quotations appears under each theme, supported wherever possible by interrelated proverbs and phrases which throw further light on the topic. To clarify the terminology used, a quotation has broadly been defined as something traceable back to a single utterance at a given instance; proverbs are seen as embodying an essential truth, likely to have been coined by different people at different times; phrases are taken to be "a group of words (not a sentence) with a particular meaning". To aid understanding of the material, explanatory notes are given wherever this is felt to be useful, and cross-references take the reader to other relevant themes in the text. In addition to finding material under a particular theme, readers can also consult two different indexes, one organized by author and one by keyword.