Old Things quotes
87 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Punch a man on the nose, kick an old man downstairs, shoot somebody or any old thing like that, that’s my job. But argue with women in love—no thank you!"
"No Ideas original - there is nothing new under the sun."
"Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!"
"How I have walked... day after day, and all alone, to see if there was not something among the old things which was new!"
"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside old things — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It's remarkable how we go on year after year, doing the same old things. We get tired and bored, and ask when they'll come for us"
"The new is always made up of the old, or rather, what people see in the new is always the old thing. The rear-view mirror. The future of the future is the present, and this is something that people are terrified of."
"A schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of a return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death -- the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new."
"Old things are better than new things, because they've got stories in them, Ethan."
"Now the culture is made of old things, it's a collage. Art made out of art is not art. You're supposed to make art out of life."
"He who travels in search of something which he has not got, travels away from himself and grows old even in youth among old things."
"Hot things, sharp things, sweet things, cold things All rot the teeth, and make them look like old things."
"I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road."
"When a belief vanishes, there survives it -- more and more vigorously so as to cloak the absence of the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new things -- a fetishistic attachment to the old things which it did once animate, as if it was in them and not in ourselves that the divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent cause -- the death of the gods."
"New things are always better than old things."
"The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things."
"Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing."
"New directions in science are launched by new tools much more often than by new concepts. The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained."
"nothing's news. it's the same old thing in disguise. only one thing comes without a disguise and you only see it once, or maybe never. like getting hit by a freight train. makes us realize that all our moaning about long lost girls in gingham dresses is not so important after all."
"Surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things."
"library is a beautiful old thing"
"The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things."
"In the complete overall history of tennis, I figure I'll be worth a sentence or two.... That's why my place in the all-time rankings means so very little to me, because I know I won't be anybody's number one, and it's that same old thing: if you're not number one, then what does it really matter?"
"At least at first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin."
"I think the people are just looking for freedom in music...There's a lot of she-bop she-bop going on out there. Maybe they're tired of that same old thing."
