Quotes & Sayings About Antiques

I'm really into antiques. But really into it because of my father, who got me into them in the first place. He's an interior designer and he's really into going to antique shows and getting up really early on Sundays and driving out to these weird little towns north of Hamilton. — Kathleen Robertson

The spectacle shop was old, long, and narrow, with a glass front and a small thin door that opened onto a somewhat busy avenue in the antiques district on the South side of Lovat. It was a quiet enough area, away from the rougher warrens, but not particularly elevated. Across the cramped street hawkers sold vases, while up the road outside a rug merchant's shop a man sold antique suits. There was also Dubois' new storefront to the East; he dealt in religious artifacts and trinkets. The shopkeep hadn't liked when he had moved in; it had somehow changed the feel of the warren. Odd folks had started showing up shortly after Saint Olmstead Religious Antiques opened: black-clad priests, Hasturians in yellow robes, and a few Deeper cultists dressed in their gray sackcloth rags. It had set the entire warren on edge. — K.M. Alexander

Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking-stick, she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common requirements of our own. — Marcel Proust

intent was honest, he really did want to help and he did have a lot of knowledge about antiques since he'd been running his family pawn shop for almost a decade. She knew they could trust him and she filed the information away for later in case they got desperate for money. — Leighann Dobbs

I've always had a keen sense of history. My father was an antiques dealer and he used to bring home boxes full of treasures, and each item always had a tale attached. — Sara Sheridan

There are no new fundamentals. You've got to be a little suspicious of someone who says, "I've got a new fundamental." That's like someone inviting you to tour a factory where they are manufacturing antiques. — Jim Rohn

Actually, the first thing I do is choose the antique that will be featured in each book. I try to find unusual objects with great stories. I am fascinated by the stories. — Jane Cleland

Dreamt I stood in a china shop so crowded from floor to far-off ceiling with shelves of porcelain antiques, etc. that moving a muscle would cause several to fall and smash to bits. Exactly what happened but instead of a crashing noise, an august chord rang out, half cello, half celeste, D major (?), held for four beats. My wrist knocked a Ming vase affair off its pedestal-E flat. Whole string section, glorious, transcendant, angels wept. Deliberately now, smashed a figurine of an ox for the next note, then a milkmaid, then Saturday's Child-orgy of shrapnel filled the air, divine harmonies my head. — David Mitchell

Every inch of space was used. As the road narrowed, signs receded upwards and changed to the vertical. Businesses simply soared from ground level and hung out vaster, more fascinatingly illuminated shingles than competitors. We were still in a traffic tangle, but now the road curved. Shops crowded the pavements and became homelier. Vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats adangle - as always, my ultimate ghastliness - and here and there among the crowds the alarming spectacle of an armed Sikh, shotgun aslant, casually sitting at a bank entrance. And markets everywhere. To the right, cramped streets sloped down to the harbor. To the left, as we meandered along the tramlines through sudden dense markets of hawkers' barrows, the streets turned abruptly into flights of steps careering upwards into a bluish mist of domestic smoke, clouds of washing on poles, and climbing. Hong Kong had the knack of building where others wouldn't dare. — Jonathan Gash

The spicy sweet fragrance of the large full blooms, which rambled over the side and top of an arched metal framework, welcomed them as they walked beneath them. Shafts of sunlight pierced the canopy, dust motes floating languorously in the golden beams that spotlighted clumps of wayward snowdrops growing in the lawn. — Ellen Read

I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives. — Paul Engle

The shop was full to the brim with Earth antiques of all kinds. The knowledgeable connoisseur and the ignorant tourist alike could find within its walls everything from A to Z: from 600-year-old alarm clocks (it seemed about right that the human race wouldn't leave Earth without them) to a statue of a ferocious predator that used to be called a 'zebra'. — Michael K. Schaefer

Antiques to Die For sets the gold standard for the classic contemporary cozy. Agatha-finalist Jane K. Cleland's writing is top-notch; her plotting and pace smooth and assured. This antiquing series is in mint condition! — Julia Spencer-Fleming

Antiques and Oriental rugs tell people that my mother may be a dog breeder who dropped out of Bryn Mawr, but she's got power - because she's got money. — E. Lockhart

Since nostaglia is fueled by inflation, could it be that inflation is the result of a conspiracy by the people who are trying to palm off McGovern buttons and Howdy Doody puppets and their Aunt Thelma's toaster as antiques. — Calvin Trillin

The weapons attacking her were a diverse mix: antiques such as American carbines, Czech-style machine guns, Japanese Type-38 rifles; newer weapons such as standard-issue People's Liberation Army rifles and submachine guns, stolen from the PLA after the publication of the "August Editorial"; and even a few Chinese dadao swords and spears. — Liu Cixin

I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics. — Pankaj Mishra

Trees are your best antiques. — Alexander Smith

These valuable thing produced in us a feeling of intimidation. We knew that no matter how far we got in life, we would never really be meant for such fineness, that the few expensive antiques we did have had fallen to us from a higher life and now condescended to live among us. — Nicole Krauss

I love history ... everything is inspired by history, so that's why I love vintage and antiques. — Kelly Wearstler

I think films are perishable, because they depend too much on technology, which advances too quickly and the films become old-fashioned, antiques. What I hope for is that technology advances to the point that films in the future will depend on a little pill which you take; then you sit in the dark, and from your eyes you project the film you want to see on a blank wall. — Luis Bunuel

Photos always seem to exist as sort of stuffy, unnecessary antiques that we put in a drawer - unless we take them out, put them in current dialogue, and give them relevance. — Mark Klett

I like cluttered, old, dark-wood antiques. I like character. — Martha Plimpton

The 19th century became the age of the museum. Objects were scrambled for, specimens seized, and friezes and antiques grasped. — Kate Williams

I love old architecture. I love collecting furniture, mixing really earthy things with the very polished. I don't come from an interiors background, so I'm not an expert. I just enjoy going to antiques shows and finding interesting things. — Jason Wu

I collect traditional Aubusson tapestries that you can hang on a wall. The last lot I bought were from an antiques fair in London. — Bonnie Tyler

I may be an antique like the Stones, but antiques are valuable. — Billy Joel

Whenever you see me, I'm on antique quaaludes. — Tina Fey

This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad - sad priests - in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with 'the odor of the sheep.' This I ask you: Be shepherds, with the 'odor of the sheep,' make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men. — Pope Francis

No, being too busy isn't your reason for keeping clutter in your life. Uncomfortable though it may be to have so much unfinished work surrounding you, you keep those magazines and broken antiques because all that potential feels nice. Now take one more step in your thinking and what you'll find is a tiny but powerful fear of commitment. — Barbara Sher

I was always fascinated, even as a child, by antiques and ancient times. I always felt I should have been born in the 17th or 18th century. They really had a big stone castle with authentic furniture. — Margaret O'Brien

My flat is a bit like an oriental bazaar. It's filled with the oddest objects from all my travels, and you can't really move in it. I love collecting antiques and often spend weekends driving around bric-a-brac markets. — Mark Shand

The items people own reveal something about the owners. Every quaint item that a person selects to surround themselves with has a basic quiddity, the essence, or inherent nature of things. As a people, we assign a value meaning not only to the things that we presently possess, but also to the items destined for one generation to hand down to the next generation. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I collect antiques. Why? Because they're beautiful. — Broderick Crawford

My house is very serious. It's a lot of antiques, and the way I decided to liven it up is, I paired it very vibrant colors and - bugs ... I think that they're pretty. And I think that they're fascinating and they're natural. — Emily Procter

The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men. — Thomas Hardy

I've got a stag weekend coming up and I've said I'm not doing anything more than a few drinks. I won't have it. I'll go home and watch Antiques Roadshow. — Martin Freeman

The antique shop in the Brompton Road proved, as fore-shadowed, to be an antique shop in the Brompton Road and, like all antique shops except the swanky ones in the Bond Street neigbourhood, dingy outside and dark and smelly within. I don't know why it is, but the proprietors of these establishments always seem to be cooking some sort of stew in the back room. — P.G. Wodehouse

Laughing, the same way a wife might laugh at her husband who always brings home the strangest items from a local antiques market. — Cassandra Clare

An antique is anything old with class. — John Bartlett

We find in biking the fullfilment of an antique instinct: vagabondage — Maurice Barres

The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the
psyche and society into a single echo chamber. — Marshall McLuhan

Books were everywhere in their large apartment. Histories, biographies, novels, studies on Quebec antiques, poetry. Placed in orderly bookcases. Just about every table had at least one book on it, and oftern several magazines. And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace. If a visitor was the observant type, and made it further into the apartment to Gamache's study, he might see the story the books in there told. — Louise Penny

Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

The Mologai. The sun shines less in the Mologai, but heat gathers there in the shade and smoke. Steep cramped dwellings, shops oldish. Oddly, smoke pervading the whole area. The streets cling to contours. You clamber up steps from one narrow alleyway to the next, among the stalls. It's an antique hunter's paradise - or rather purgatory, because the promise of heaven takes time to realize. — Jonathan Gash

The Metropolitan Museum of Art claims to be the largest in the western hemisphere. It's right, but I'm not too sure about the arts bit. Don't misunderstand me. It's got tons of genuine art. It's also got tons of stuff that is hard to classify. I can't come to grips with a massive cube with a grandiose title. I allow that it's art, but not my sort. I need the big stone block to tell me something about the bloke whose name's on the caption, and it doesn't. That off my chest, I admit that any place with 3.3 million works of art truly is a wonder. — Jonathan Gash

My mom used to take me to antique shows, which I hated because everything was so dusty and old and there were all these weird ladies selling their antiques. We call them "eclectic" now. But it was really amazing that I was exposed to that when I was younger. Now that I have my own taste, I understand it more. — Jason Wu

My mom decorated with lots of antiques. I never liked it when I was a little girl - I wanted to live in a modern house. But now I love it. — Paris Hilton

Going by Dr. Marriott's description, Zoe imagined it to be small and elegant as she peered into dozens of shelves, rummaging through the contents. There were globes and charts and atlases, pocket watches and hand-painted Indian silk, gold-plated cutlery, litter coffers of spice, inlaid combs, silver fasteners, trinket boxes, blown-glass figurines, turn-of-the-century postcards with foreign stamps, and portraits of Victorian authors in elaborate frames. But nowhere did she discover a stone of any kind, with or without runes. — Christine Brodien-Jones

You don't leave the film alone. You have a new audience, and you have a new medium. Why would you leave it alone? Film is not an antique. It's not a relic. It's not a Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want someone painting over a da Vinci or Rembrandt. But these movies aren't that. — William Friedkin

The Theory of Sexual Understanding is mine. I created it. It works between a man and a woman. It's this: Everything's up to her. — Jonathan Gash

In 1990, I was in 'The Three Sisters' at the Royal Court and won the Clarence Derwent award for my supporting role as Natasha - the prize was £100. I could have paid the gas bill, but I ended up buying a porcelain and silver Bavarian coffee set in an antiques shop in Penzance. — Lesley Manville

I think the reason I love 'Antiques Roadshow' is that it is sort of like the lottery. There's the chance a regular Joe could walk in with anything and come out close to a millionaire. There's the thrill of the find. — Lara Spencer

If you're at an antiques fair, and have been unable to beat the dealer down earlier in the day, pay a return visit at the end. They may be more inclined to accept your offer, rather than having to pack the piece up and take it home. — Judith Miller

trust is a fragile thing, like a fine piece of rare china on display in an antiques shop. Once it's broken, the pieces never quite fit - no matter how carefully you try to glue them together. — Laura Markovitch

We're just like the antiques. We grow old and get scarred and beat up along the way, and the only question becomes whether we're going to make it until we realize what we already have is valuable." --Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale — Lynda Rutledge

Deuce glanced at him before turning his attention back to Zane and Julian. "Dare I ask what you've done to deserve protective custody?" he asked Julian. "I deal antiques," Julian answered in a soft voice. Deuce nodded, looking Julian up and down. He turned his head to look at Ty speculatively. "That's a euphemism for 'I kill things', isn't it? — Abigail Roux

I shop at thrift stores a lot. I have a lot of silver pitchers and I put my flowers in those. I collect antiques, so there are a lot of old rocking chairs ... My friends call my home the vortex because nobody wants to leave. — Monica Potter

Only uncomfortable chairs become antiques - the comfortable ones are worn out by hard use. — Jacob Braude

Buying land is not like buying antique. It is not the only deal available. — Li Ka-shing

All the benefit that a New Yorker gets out of Kansas is no more than what he might get out of Saskatchewan, the Argentine pampas, of Siberia. But New York to a Kansan is not only a place where he may get drunk, look at dirty shows and buy bogus antiques; it is also a place where he may enforce his dunghill ideas upon his betters. — H.L. Mencken

Fraud is the daughter of greed. — Jonathan Gash

[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both.
These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight ...
She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind. — Nora Roberts

When I was a little girl, I watched all old movies. My mother liked old movies, and she loved shopping for antiques, so I was around old things all the time. — Dita Von Teese

I had already done a lot of research for Rough Riders, keeping notebooks and old photographs. Some of the books were antiques for that time period, with the covers falling off. — Tom Berenger

I have no particular interest in antiquities or antiques, but I like things to meet a certain aesthetic. — Stephen Bayley

Grady and Preston were both after the same mark in Paris a few years ago," Julian said to
Zane. "They met during what I hear was a drunken, debauched night of ... selling antiques. That's how
I knew Ty had been there. I never saw him."
"Such unnecessary details," Preston murmured.
"Ty, seriously," Zane grunted.
"How is this my fault?" Ty asked in exasperation.
"Do you have a history with every guy with a gun in the Northern hemisphere?"
"Oh, like you don't have some winners back there you hope we never run into. Let's head to
Miami and see what comes out of the woodwork."
"Ty."
"I like guys with guns!"
"Oh my God," Julian muttered as he rubbed at his eyes. — Abigail Roux

I do like silver. I love antiques. I collect Georgian glass at home. When you think about how fragile that it is and think about how long these things have lasted - some of it is 400 years old - I find the history of these things extraordinary. — Anthony Warlow

Time meant nothing.
She loved him in an instant.
She would love him forever. — Ellen Read

Back when I was restoring art and antiques, finding ivory was very difficult because it's illegal, and the only difference between bone and ivory is that bone is free and not illegal. — Dan Phillips

The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself. — Josh Lanyon

Sign outside a country shop: We buy junk and sell antiques. — Dave Barry

Why was Will able to buy this cherished object, this marker of some long-past connection between two people, in an antiques store? At some point there had to be an ending, a death or a breakup, and it got tossed in a box to be given away or sold. — Dana Spiotta

Affluence isn't affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else's affluence is mere tat. Until you've experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel's plush interior, you've only had a dud replica of the real thing. — Jonathan Gash

Remember preconceptions? Even though I'd landed hoping simply to somehow scrape the transatlantic fare home, I'd been an arrogant swine, imbued with that Old World toffee-nosed attitude: The United States of America's got no culture, not deep down. — Jonathan Gash

I've gotten so far past the Android and iPhones that I'm back to a flip-phone. It's funny, you can buy antique flip-phones online. A lot of us collect them. Clearly, they're considered antiques. — Tim Allen

I'd think it strange that the boardinghouse attracted both him and me, but that's what cheap places do
draw in people with no money. An apartment of my own was unthinkable at that time of my life, and even if I'd found an affordable one it wouldn't have satisfied my fundamental need to live in a communal past, or what I imagined the past to be like: a world full of antiques. — David Sedaris

'Antiques Roadshow' is my favorite show. Every Monday night I have one hour of appointment television. I get the popcorn out and tell my husband, 'Don't bother me.' — Lara Spencer

Priceless things matter not for their value, but because they offer us an enduring reminder of stability and permanence. — Barbara Taylor Bradford

In youth, love and art. In age, investments and antiques. — Mason Cooley

When I did my first price guide in 1979, publications weren't interested in mentioning it. Now I get phone calls weekly if not daily from publications and television shows who want to know what's hot, how to get started in antiques, and the best way to buy antiques. — Judith Miller

Forgery, being the weirdest form of creativity there is, like antiques, costs lives. Why is it that antiques demand sacrificial victims? Dunno, but if they don't get enough, forgery does. You want proof? Here it is: Once a faker's found out, he dies. Truly. It always happens. — Jonathan Gash

What is the sweetness of flowers compared to the savour of dust and confinement? — Peter Ackroyd

Far from the truth lay the antique assumption that man had fathered the weapon. The weapon, instead, had fathered man. — Robert Ardrey

The problem: If you've an antique for sale, then, sad to relate, the world isn't your oyster. It's not that easy. Even if somebody gives you the National Gallery, your options are still very, very limited. Okay, you can sell the Old Masters, set up a trust, buy your favorite brewery. But that's strictly it. You're limited by honesty on one hand and law - that hobble of sanity - on the other. — Jonathan Gash

Some say the antique syndrome surfaced to offset the newness of the land, the homes, and the settlers. Some say the interest was initiated by a desire to return to the roots of yesterday. I contend the entire movement to acquire antiques was born out of sheer respect of things that lasted longer than fifteen minutes. — Erma Bombeck

Dad told me, 'Mommy doesn't need antidepressants, you see. She needs flowers and sometimes she needs antiques. — Katherine Taylor

The antiques in the window were especially cute, wrestling with each other and playfully snapping at each other's tails. — Joseph Fink

I think Bergman's films have eternal relevance, because they deal with the difficulty of personal relationships and lack of communication between people and religious aspirations and mortality, existential themes that will be relevant a thousand years from now. When many of the things that are successful and trendy today will have been long relegated to musty-looking antiques, his stuff will still be great. — Woody Allen

It doesn't take money to have style, it just takes a really good eye. Sometimes you can find amazing culinary antiques that will make it feel like an old French kitchen. — Tyler Florence

I quite like antiques. I like things that are old and the history they bring with them. I would rather fly to Morocco on an $800 ticket and buy a chair for $300 than spend $1,100 on one at Pottery Barn. — Walton Goggins

Although it's just as likely to be a son," Carla says. I've missed some earlier part of her speech, and I don't know what she's talking about. "You're lucky you have a daughter. They say sons steal from their old mothers. It was in a report I saw on the news." "But I do have a son," I say. "Millions of pounds, stolen every year." "I don't have millions of pounds," I say. "And all kinds of antiques. Georgian, Victorian." "I don't have any antiques, either." Oh, this is no good. What sort of a conversation — Emma Healey

Swirls of antique stained glass, blazes of brass, forests of carved wood and waterfalls of crystal combine to make up the city's most fabulously festive interior. — Mimi Sheraton

The risks in antiques fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You've never heard of a fraudster involved in a shoot-out, of the "Come and get me, copper!" sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like weather. — Jonathan Gash

The Astors and the Vanderbilts, their pleasure domes and money: she was sick of it. Sick of envying, sick of herself. She didn't understand antiques or architecture, she couldn't draw like Sylvia, she didn't read like Ted, she had few interests and no expertise. A paucity for love was the only true thing she'd ever had. — Jonathan Franzen

When you're visiting an antiques fair, turn left once you've passed through the entrance. Everyone else will turn right, which means you can get to the bargains before them. — Judith Miller

She [Bernice] didn't like anything that had an adult theme, with only one exception, her collection of erotic female memorabilia. They were all antiques, fragments of other women's sexuality that was somehow easier to deal with than her own. — K. Ford K.

Growing old is God's privilege to you ... you only can be compared to any antique and old wine ... antiques are expensive and old wines taste best ... above all, it beats the alternative
DYING YOUNG. So cheer up and be grateful that God is giving you that privilege. — Peekey

I have money. I have properties I didn't buy, cars and carpets, antiques and jewels-and none of them means a damn to me if I don't have her. So-give me a number. — Emma Chase