Old Books Quotes - Page 3

• No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: "Great heavens, did I write as well as that then?" for the implication always is that one does not write any longer so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• Jake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home.

  Stephen King

  Book, Home, Doors

  Stephen King (1993). “The Waste Lands”, Signet Book

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• The grand old Book of God still stands; and this old earth, the more its leaves are turned over and pondered, the more it will sustain and illustrate the Sacred word.

  James Dwight Dana

  Book, Earth, Sacred

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, 1895.

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• I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

  Sara Sheridan

  Jobs, Book, Research

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• I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Dedication, Men

  "Dinosaur in a Haystack". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "The Razumovsky Duet" (p. 263), 1995.

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• I prefer old books and find them more relevant. I dislike new books. It's like drinking wine that's not ready.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Book, Drinking, Wine

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books

  Aravind Adiga

  Book, Heart, Too Much

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• You mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before --" "The writers," Pris said, "made it up.

  Philip K. Dick

  Book, Mean, Space

  Philip K. Dick (2017). “Blade Runner”, p.112, Hachette UK

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• I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better - Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos - so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.

  Tana French

  Book, Thinking, Years

  "In the Woods". Book by Tana French, January 30, 2007.

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• All who have read a few old books have picked up the old tactics of considering every new idea a 'heresy' which must be rooted out.

  Lu Xun

  Book, Ideas, Tactics

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• Be interested in everything. You don't have to adore it. I don't adore hip-hop, I don't think it's great music, but I'm interested, I listen. I watch a lot of new films, I see everything. I still read, I like books, whether they are old books, new books. I'm interested - you gotta stay interested!

  Mel Brooks

  Book, Thinking, Hip Hop

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• Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue;-
  All things, in short, to which belong
  The charm, the grace that Time
  makes strong,
  All these I prize, but (entre nous)
  Old friends are best!

  Henry Austin Dobson

  Strong, Book, Wine

  Henry Austin Dobson, “To Richard Watson Gilder”

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• I don't spend much on clothes. I buy old books. I tell myself I ought to save - it's the classic Northern work ethic. I like good holidays, though. I'm a big fan of cruises. I love unpacking once and having the scenery change every day.

  Alan Titchmarsh

  Book, Holiday, Clothes

  Source: www.mirror.co.uk

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• I keep to old books, for they teach me something; from the new I learn very little

  Voltaire

  Book, Reading, Littles

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• Whoever lives for poetry must read everything. How often has the light of a new idea sprung for me from a simple brochure! When one allows himself to be animated by new images, he discovers iridescence in the images of old books. Poetic ages unite in a living memory. The new age awakens the old. The old age comes to live again in the new. Poetry is never as unified as when it diversifies.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Memories, Book, Simple

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• What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!

  James Russell Lowell

  Time, Book, Reading

  "Literary Essays, vol. I". Book by James Russell Lowell, 1864-1890.

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• When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me-I still watch silent films. I don't think that there is any such thing as an old film; you don't say, 'I read an old book by Flaubert,' or 'I saw an old play by Moliere.'

  Alain Resnais

  Book, Thinking, Impact

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• Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.

  Thomas Hardy

  Book, Past, Long

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Diversion Classics)”, p.158, Diversion Books

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• Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

  Jonathan Swift

  Book, Omission, Authorship

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• The library smells like old books — a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.

  Laura Whitcomb

  Moving, Book, Smell

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• I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Lovers, Said

  Margaret Atwood (2004). “Oryx and Crake”, p.315, Anchor

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• I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.

  Richard Brautigan

  Coffee, Book, Years

  Richard Brautigan (1989). “Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar”, p.38, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Just so you know, when they say "once upon a time"....they're lying. It's not once upon a time. Its not even twice upon a time. It's hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.

  Jodi Picoult

  Lying, Book, Once Upon A Time

  Jodi Picoult, Samantha van Leer (2013). “Between the Lines”, p.334, Simon and Schuster

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• You ignorant little rodent! This isn't just an old book. This is the book of Everafter." "Sorry, I haven't read it. I'm waiting for the movie," Puck said.

  Michael Buckley

  Sorry, Book, Waiting

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• The Body of B. Franklin, Printer Like the Cover of an old Book Its Contents turn out And Stript of its Lettering & Guilding Lies here. Food for Worms For, it will as he believed appear once more In a new and more elegant Edition corrected and improved By the Author.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Tombstone, Lying, Book

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