I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream & remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all—the colleges I mean—like an opera.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
The world surely has not another place like Oxford; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime and more than one to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty's heightening.
Matthew Arnold, Thyrsis (1866)
There are few greater temptations on earth than to stay permanently at Oxford in meditation, and to read all the books in the Bodleian.
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953)
Oxford is so beautiful still that only those who know her history are sensible of any loss.
E. A. Greening Lamborn (1877–1950)
This Oxford, I have no doubt is the finest City in the world.
