Old Ancient Quotes & Sayings

an old Underwood office machine so big and black and ancient it looked as though it should come with a foreign correspondent attached. — Donald E. Westlake

No more generational feuds, no more ancient grudges, no more pointless revenge carried out against people who inherited some old guilt from their great-grandparents. — Marko Kloos

An old Gordita reflex, dating back to shortly after the Second World War, when a black family had actually tried to move into town and the citizens, with helpful advice from the Ku Klux Klan, had burned the place to the ground and then, as if some ancient curse had come into effect, refused to allow another house ever to be built on the site. The lot stood empty until the town finally confiscated it and turned it into a park, where the youth of Gordita Beach, by the laws of karmic adjustment, were soon gathering at night to drink, dope, and fuck, depressing their parents, though not property values particularly. — Thomas Pynchon

It was a pity that most people didn't actually go to libraries anymore, not when they could sit in the comfort of their own quarters and access files electronically. Want to read the new hot interstellar caper novel, or the latest issue of Beings holozine? Input the name, touch a control, and zip - it's in your datapad. . . .
There were, of course, old-fashioned beings who would still actually trundle down to where the files were. On some worlds the most ancient libraries kept books - actual bound volumes of printed matter - lined up neatly on shelves, and readers would walk the aisles, take a volume down, sniff the musty-dusty odor of it, and then carry it to a table to leisurely peruse.
There weren't many of those readers left, and they were growing rarer all the time . . . But there were some who still knew how to actually turn a page - and for those who were willing to do so, the rewards could be great indeed. — Michael Reaves And Steve Perry

She was crouched in the corner of the room, eating something off the floor. It was the old woman dressed in endless black. When she looked up this time there was no question she was there for me. She had the face of my mother but much older, her ancient decayed mouth coming closer for her good-night kiss. I steeled myself against her putrid smell, the mouthful of bitter dust, but as her lips touched mine it was like biting into a purple black plum whose fruit was brilliant red, like an explosion of intense joy. Its childhood smell wrinkled my nose with pleasure, its sweet juices ran down my chin, turning into a beautiful black ocean where I floated safely, not lost as I had imagined, but securely tucked away deep in space. — Mary Woronov

To walk in Time, perhaps, as men walk on long roads ... to see the lie of old and even forgotten lands, to behold ancient men walking, and to hear their languages as they spoke them, in the days before the days, when tongues of forgotten lineage were heard in kingdoms long fallen by the shores of the Atlantic.
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lost Road — J.R.R. Tolkien

We are digital archives of the African Pliocene, even of Devonian seas; walking repositories of wisdom out of the old days. You could spend a lifetime reading in this ancient library and die unsated by the wonder of it. — Richard Dawkins

Custom, though never so ancient, without truth, is but an old error. — Cyprian

[About Uluru] I'm suggesting nothing here, but I will say that if you were an intergalactic traveler who had broken down in our solar system, the obvious directions to rescuers would be: "Go to the third planet and fly around till you see the big red rock. You can't miss it." If ever on earth they dig up a 150,000-year-old rocket ship from the galaxy Zog, this is where it will be. I'm not saying I expect it to happen; not saying that at all. I'm just observing that if I were looking for an ancient starship this is where I would start digging. — Bill Bryson

Humanity is an organism, inherently rejecting all that is deleterious, that is, wrong, and absorbing after trial what is beneficial, that is, right. If so disposed, the Architect of the Universe, we must assume, might have made the world and man perfect, free from evil and from pain, as angels in heaven are thought to be; but although this was not done, man has been given the power of advancement rather than of retrogression. The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom," says Confucius, great sage and teacher. The next world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it. — Andrew Carnegie

Textbooks describe DNA as a blueprint for a body. It's better seen as a recipe for making a body, because it is irreversible. But today I want to present it as something different again, and even more intriguing. The DNA in you is a coded description of ancient worlds in which your ancestors lived. DNA is the wisdom out of the old days, and I mean very old days indeed. — Richard Dawkins

It is no accident that, of the early Jesuit scholars who were pioneers in making China's culture known in Europe, those who concerned themselves with the Book of Changes were all later declared to be insane or heretic. Indeed, to the Chinese themselves the study of the I Ching is not to be taken lightly. By an unwritten law, only those advanced in years regard themselves as ready to learn from it. Confucius is said to have been seventy years old when he first took up the Book of Changes. — Hellmut Wilhelm

State Road 60 is one of those great old Florida drives. From Tampa on the west coast to Vero Beach on the east, rolling through Mulberry and Bartow and Yeehaw Junction. Phosphate mines and orange groves and cows loitering near water holes in vast open flats dotted with sabal palms, stretching for miles, making the sky big. Here and there were the kind of occasional, isolated farmhouses that made people subconsciously think: Do they get Internet? In the middle of one overgrown field stood a single concrete wall, several stories high, covered with grime and mildew, the ancient ruins of a drive-in theater. The top of the wall was the last thing to catch a warm glow from the setting sun. — Tim Dorsey

In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making. — Carol P. Christ

The essence of modernity is that progress no longer waits on genius; instead we have learned to put our faith in the organized efforts of ordinary men. Science is as old as the race, but the effective organization of science is new. Ancient science, like placer mining, was a pursuit of solitary prospectors. Nuggets of truth were found, but the total wealth of knowledge increased slowly. Modern man began to transform this world when he began to mine the hidden veins of knowledge systematically. — William Wickenden

Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she'll have to go back to bad old ways if she's ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he's hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier. Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust ... — Joe Abercrombie

Even if these stories are 3,000 years old, there's still so much about the characters, about the dilemmas, about their understanding of the universe that still resonates. The whole idea of order and chaos, which is really central to the ancient Egyptian understanding of the world, is still very much with us. — Rick Riordan

Like evolution itself, there have been rapid advances and crippling setbacks along the way. If the Library of Alexandria had never been burned to the ground it is possible to imagine that we would have built upon the achievements of the ancient Greeks to greater and earlier effect, and therefore it could have been in the time of a Cardano or a Newton or a Pascal that we first put a man on the moon. And we can only wonder where we would be. And at the planets we would have terraformed and colonised by the twenty-first century. Which medical advances we would have made. Maybe if there had been no dark ages, no switching off of the light, we would have found a way never to grow old, to never die. — Matt Haig

If we turn now to such vestiges of cult as are associated otherwise than with time and season, we discover a definite recognition of the survival of these nearly a century ago. Keightley, the old fairy mythologist, who did such yeoman service in the collection of much valuable elfin lore, says, as long ago as 1850, when referring to the confused nature of his subject: 'Indeed it could not well be otherwise, when we recollect that all these beings (the larger and greater fairies) once formed part of ancient and exploded systems of religion and that it is chiefly in the traditions of the peasantry that their memorial has been preserved. — Lewis Spence

Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a "holiday" in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over. — Monica Ali

Part of Sykes's motive was rooted in religiosity. A devout Catholic, he regarded a return of the ancient tribe of Israel to the Holy Land as a way to correct
a nearly two-thousand-year-old wrong. That view had taken on new passion and
urgency with the massacres of the Armenians. To Sykes, in that ongoing atrocity, the Ottoman Empire had proven it could never again be trusted to protect
its religious minority populations. At war's end, the Christian and Jewish Holy
Land of Palestine would be taken from it, and the failure of the Crusades made
right. — Scott Anderson

But a smell shivered him awake.
It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive - so alive! And it was close.
The vapors invaded Nicholas' nostrils and his hair rose to their roots. His eyes were as heavy as manhole covers, but he opened them. Through the dying calm inside him snaked a tremble of fear.
The trees themselves seemed tense, waiting. The moonlight was a hard shell, sharp and ready to ready be struck and to ring like steel.
A shadow moved.
It poured like oil from between the tall trees and flowed across dark sandy dirt, lengthening into the middle of the ring. Trees seem to bend toward it, spellbound. A long, long shadow ... — Stephen M. Irwin

I spur my horse past the ruined city;
the ruined city, that wakes the traveler's thoughts:
ancient battlements, high and low;
old grave mounds, great and small.
Where the shadow of a single tumbleweed trembles
and the voice of the great trees clings forever,
I sigh over all these common bones
No roll of the immortals bears their names. — Han-shan

Did the ancient Gaels not wear undergarments?" Frank leered. "You've never heard that old song about what a Scotsman wears beneath his kilts? — Diana Gabaldon

Tom's words laid bare the hearts of the trees and their thoughts, which were often dark and strange, filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers and usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient, a survivor of vast forgotten woods; and in it there lived yet, ageing no quicker than the hills, the fathers of the fathers of trees, remembering times when they were lords. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The morality taught by Paul and demonstrated by his converts was in stark contrast to the old, permissive morality of the ancient world. It was unconventional: It showed a love of man irrespective of his race, showed forgiveness instead of resentment for wrong, joy instead of grim endurance of adversity or oppression. — John Charles Pollock

I used to think I preferred getting old to the alternative, but now I'm not sure. Sometimes the momotony of bingo and sing-alongs and ancient dusty people parked in teh hallway in wheelchairs makes me long for death. Particularly when I rememver that I'm one of the ancient dusty people, filed away like some worthless tchotchke. — Sara Gruen

Ruta Skadi was four hundred and sixteen years old, with all the pride and knowledge of an adult witch queen. She was wiser by far than any short-lived human, but she had not the slightest idea of how like a child she seemed beside these ancient beings. Nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling.
But they expected nothing else: she was very young. — Philip Pullman

He was like some prophet of old, scourging the sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people should be in bed.
'He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed right at where I was sitting and shouted "This means you!" I could have sunk through the floor. — P.G. Wodehouse

Once, in ancient China, there was a serious drought when the grain died and did not grow back. People starved, until an old man came from the foot of Mount Hakusan, the White Mountain, and said to the emperor that he had invented a wonder medicine, or food supplement, that had made seventy members of his family live at ease. If this medicine is used, your complexion or ability will not decline even a bit, and you will feel even better than normal. He then said to the emperor, 'If this medicine is false, the entire family of seventy people I saved can be put to death. — Antony Cummins

Gold and iron at the present day, as in ancient times, are the rulers of the world; and the great events in the world of mineral art are not the discovery of new substances, but of new and rich localities of old ones. — William Whewell

Staring into someone's eyes for a long time is psychic. At first it's very strange and scary - scarier than the first time you have sex. Then you begin to relax, and the person you're looking at may become very beautiful. As you look into their eyes, you may see them change sex or race. You can see the child in an old person and a young person may appear ancient. Just looking into someone's eyes for a long time can be trippier than taking acid. — Steve Abbott

It was ancient and had risen from the boiling earth. It had slept, falling dormant in the dust, rising in mist. Tuberculosis had flown in a dizzy rush to unite with warm life. It was in each new world, and every old world. First it loved animals, then it loved people too. — Louise Erdrich

Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs. — Michael Chabon

We drank Pepsi out of these old-fashioned bottles that Dad had found at some ancient country store, and I swear they tasted better than the regular kind. — Gayle Forman

The timepiece had been a birthday gift from Arian, his nineteen-year-old cousin in Tehran. It was plastered with pastoral steel and had the Faravahar hieroglyph sketched on it. This ancient pictogram was the symbol of a guardian angel. A remnant of a primeval daemon designed to protect the Persians. The clock's circumference was decorated with the flowers of life and in the middle there was a scripture written in cuneiform that read Good Deeds, Good Thoughts & Good Words. — Soroosh Shahrivar

I, too, head for the Baths of Caracalla,
thinking - with my old, magnificent
privilege of thinking ...
(And let there still be a god in me that thinks,
lost, weak, and childish,
yet whose voice is so human
it is almost a song.) Oh, to leave
this prison of poverty!
To be free of the yearning
that makes these ancient nights so splendid!
He who knows yearning, and he who does not,
have something in common: man's desires are humble. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Magic is an ancient practice that has power over superstitious mind. — Toba Beta

Who's no longer an infant," Luc said. "Lily and I are ... 'friends' ... as well. As a matter of fact, she and I were trying on corsets together, just last night."
I rolled my eyes.
"You were doing what?" Max demanded.
"It's an ancient bonding ritual," I said, annoyed with both men. What were they, thirteen years old? "Invoked to ward off childish displays of sibling rivalry. Obviously it didn't work."
Bronwyn laughed, and Luc smiled a crooked smile. — Juliet Blackwell

The conflict is an old one. George Washington and other followers of the Enlightenment Movement wrote of their belief in an imminent maturity of humankind. The ancient and cruel feudal ways were splitting asunder at last; therefore, how could truth and freedom not prevail? In fact, the Enlightenment changed humanity forever. Yet its followers forgot something important
that each generation is invaded by a new wave of barbarians ... its children. Just as Washington, Franklin, and their peers took joy in toppling the tyranny of Church and King, so the youths of the Romantic Movement thrived on jeering the lofty ideals of their predecessors. — David Brin

When I was four years old, my father, who was a colonel in the army, was stationed in Salzburg, Austria. Across the street from our house was an ancient castle on a cliff. So when I first heard fairy tales, I felt as if the magic of 'Cinderella' or 'Sleeping Beauty' was taking place right in my own neighborhood. — Mary Pope Osborne

Tall as the sea-kings of old, he stood above all that were near; ancient of days he seemed and yet in the flower of manhood; and wisdom sat upon his brow, and strength and healing were in his hands, and a light was about him. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The horses forced into the chuckwagon races die of heart attacks, broken necks, broken legs, and other injuries. It'd be easy to get off on western tradition without this bloody spectacle. Dude, it's the Old West, not ancient Rome! — Tommy Lee

I truly am %100 convinced that, if you want to raise knights and noble women, you must teach your children the philosophies of old. I have been teaching my son ancient philosophies since he was nine years old. It becomes a thought pattern, a way of life, an ingrained character. The philosophy of old is the stuff of knights and queens! If I can one day, I will put up a school dedicated to raising young children in the ways of old, from a fresh young age! — C. JoyBell C.

Whoever becomes master of a city accustomed to live in freedom and does no destroy it, may reckon on being destroyed by it. For if it should rebel, it can always screen itself under the name of liberty and its ancient laws, which no length of time, nor any benefit conferred will ever cause it to forget; and do what you will, and take what care you may, unless the inhabitants be scattered and dispersed, this name, and the old order of things, will never cease to be remembered ... — Niccolo Machiavelli

It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. Time augments rather than diminishes their everlasting novelty; and to our descendants of a thousand years hence it may safely be predicted that they will be even more fascinating than to ourselves. This is true of many ancient lands, but of no place is it. so true as of Egypt. — Amelia B. Edwards

Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, x you transgressors, 9 remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, 10 y declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, z 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,' 11 a calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. b I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it. — Anonymous

Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. "An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, 'Boy, what are you doing?' " 'Saving the starfish!' replied the boy. " 'But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can't save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?' called the old man. "The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, "Well, it matters to this one." And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea. — Loren Eiseley

The song is gone; the dance
is secret with the dancers in the earth,
the ritual useless, and the tribal story
lost in an alien tale.
Only the grass stands up
to mark the dancing-ring; the apple-gums
posture and mime a past corroboree,
murmur a broken chant.
The hunter is gone; the spear
is splintered underground; the painted bodies
a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot.
The nomad feet are still.
Only the rider's heart
halts at a sightless shadow, an unsaid word
that fastens in the blood of the ancient curse,
the fear as old as Cain. — Judith A. Wright

Most people know that 30 to 40 percent of the world's Jews were killed during World War II, but not that 80 to 90 percent of the Orthodox community perished, among them many who had kept alive an ancient tradition of mysticism and meditation reaching back to the Old Testament world of the prophets. — Diane Ackerman

He'd been about to turn away when she lifted her face to the moon and sang.
It was not in any language that he knew. Not in the common tongue, or in Eyllwe, or in the languages of Fenharrow or Melisande, or anywhere else on the continent
This language was ancient, each word full of power and rage and agony.
She did not have a beautiful voice. And many of the words sounded like half sobs, the vowels stretched by the pangs of sorrow, the consonants hardened by anger. She beat her breast in time, so full of savage grace, so at odds with the black gown and veil she wore. The hair on the back of his neck stood as the lament poured from her mouth, unearthly and foreign, a song of grief so old that it predated the stone castle itself.
And the the song finished, its end as butal and sudden as Nehemia's death had been.
She stood there a few moments, silent and unmoving. — Sarah J. Maas

It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life ... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death
subjects as ancient as humanity
these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak. — Louise Bogan

Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time-and you have no time! — Swami Vivekananda

The old neighborhoods of Shanghai, Feedless or with overhead Feeds kludged in on bamboo stilts, seemed frighteningly inert, like an opium addict squatting in the middle of a frenetic downtown street, blowing a reed of sweet smoke out between his teeth, staring into some ancient dream that all the bustling pedestrians had banished to unfrequented parts of their minds. — Neal Stephenson

Alamogordo and worked his two-year service stripping down ancient solar electricity stations from the bad old days before fusion. — James S.A. Corey

Let us suppose, that the Old and New worlds were formerly but one continent, and that, by a violent earthquake, the ancient Atalantis [sic] of Plato was sunk ... The sea would necessarily rush in from all quarters, and form what is now called the Atlantic ocean. — Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Mom was all about hellfire and brimstone. Her Old Testament God was a colossal, ancient brute, a maelstrom of blood and fire, of appetite and wrath. — Laird Barron

Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected. She had retired to this room as a good place in which to be miserable; for it was dark and still, full of ancient furniture, somber curtains, and hung all around with portraits of solemn old gentlemen in wigs, severe-nosed ladies in top-heavy caps, and staring children in little bobtailed coats or short-waisted frocks. It was an excellent place for woe; amd the fitful spring rain that pattered on the windowpane seemed to sob,Cry away; I'm with you. — Louisa May Alcott

Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes; old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age; neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly seek and destroy. — Sydney J. Harris

The discovery of America was the foundational event of the Scientific Revolution. It not only taught Europeans to favour present observations over past traditions, but the desire to conquer America also obliged Europeans to search for new knowledge at breakneck speed. If they really wanted to control the vast new territories, they had to gather enormous amounts of new data about the geography, climate, flora, fauna, languages, cultures and history of the new continent. Christian Scriptures, old geography books and ancient oral traditions were of little help. — Yuval Noah Harari

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is located within the Christian Quarter of the Old City adjacent to the maze of streets of the ancient Muristan district. Erected over the site many believed to be the true biblical Golgotha, the church in modern times is administered jointly by the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic Churches, and Neti had been able to secure nocturnal visitation rights for scientific study from the triumvirate. — Glenn Cooper

I was 16 before I met another passionate collector. One summer, I visited England; a new friend took me calling on his dotty, brilliant old aunt. She occupied a quaint house in Kent. Its walls were lined with glass-fronted cases full of what? Ancient shoe buckles. — Allan Gurganus

We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. — Charles Dickens

When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi hakenkreuz, but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this 'signature' to be removed from all his future editions. Having initially sympathized with some of the early European fascist movements, he wanted to express his repudiation of Hitlerism (or 'the Hun,' as he would perhaps have preferred to say), and wanted no part in tainting the ancient Indian rune by association. In its origin it is a Hindu and Jainas symbol for light, and well worth rescuing. — Christopher Hitchens

Stop drifting. You're not going to re-read your Brief Comments, your Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the commonplace books you saved for your old age. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can. — Marcus Aurelius

The young fought sleep, she thought, but the old relished it, and at the moment, she felt absolutely ancient. — Julie Garwood

And Mega has a crush on Chester."
"I do not!"
"Do too, Mega."
"He's like, old!"
"How old, Christian says."
"Like at least thirty or something."
Lor laughs. " Fucking ancient, ain't it, kid?"
"Dude," I agree. I like Lor. — Karen Marie Moning

URSKADAMUS TINE SMYORFIN MASACH!" Edme wasn't sure what to believe now - her ears or her eye? There was only one wolf who swore in both the language of bears and that of Old Wolf. "Faolan?" "Who else, for the love of Lupus? One would think you saw a ghost." "But with all that frost - you look like a lochin." Faolan gave a dismissive bark. "You should see yourself," Edme persisted. "You've got icicles hanging from your chin fur. Your belly fur looks as if it's ... " "I know! I know! I can feel it!" he replied crankily. "You look absolutely ancient. I mean older than the Sark." "Thanks a lot," Faolan huffed. "Well, what did you find?" "No meat." His voice dwindled. — Kathryn Lasky

Old truths and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all. — Anne Rice

He appears to be pointing at a massive water tower, all hinkered down overlooking the river.
'That's an old one.' This ancient, dark metal thing. It looks like a shadow of itself.
'Wait for it,' John says.
'For what?'
'It.'
A few minutes later, the sun slips behind the water tower. The effect is like a total solar eclipse, with the water tower blocking the sun.
'Whoa.'
'Thanks. I arranged that myself. — Susane Colasanti

How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few! — William Blake

I thought to myself then that it didn't matter where I ended up; I'd always be living that summer in that town, wishing that I;d done things differently, tormented by the fact that I hadn't. I'd never go far enough to be able to escape it. Maybe you're happy about that. OR maybe you're not. Maybe you're carrying your own regrets, and you understand how easy it is to let your life get away from you. I wish I could be the hero of this story, but I'm not. I'm just the one to tell it, at least my part in it- the story of Katie Mackey and the people who failed her. It's an old one, this tale of selfish desires and the lament that follows, as ancient as the story of Adam and Eve turned away forever from paradise. — Lee Martin

Whether on Ida's shady brow,
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceas'd;

Whether in Heav'n ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air,
Where the melodious winds have birth;

Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wand'ring in many a coral grove,
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry!

How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc'd, the notes are few!

- "To the Muses — William Blake

My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top. — Gore Vidal

In Turkey, ancient drawings that are two thousand or more years old show djinn in half human-half reptilian forms with horns, scaly skin, lizard-like eyes, and claws for hands. This depiction is similar to the Christian description of devils and demons. It is also interesting to note that Islamic art dating from only eight hundred years ago shows the djinn as more human-like. — Rosemary Ellen Guiley

The princess stops us walking. She holds the lantern up between us, and she looks at me with the eyes of all the princesses and queens in the history book. Eyes as old as Judas The Hero and Micah's boat of stars. She is ancient and profound, and she has Internment fascinated, copying her hair and her clothing in an attempt to understand. She looks at me now the way the whole floating city looks at her--hoping for some sort of answer that doesn't exist. — Lauren DeStefano

I had always heard rumors of her, Nanook thought, she who can control the wind, the water, the earth, and fire ... she who can talk to time. But those were old myths of a woman who lived many thousands of years ago, the first daughter of the Earth. There is a prophecy that she will return again, during the end times -- every religion has someone like that, someone to wait for and put your faith in, but my culture had mostly covered up her existence. We had a god of the sea, a god of the land, a god of the air, a god of fire, but no one who could control all of the elements. We spoke, only in whispers, of the ancient bloodline -- the descendents of the Great Mother. Too many superstitious minds, too many men concerned only with their own power and position, had heard these whispers in the past and taken gruesome steps to erase the descendents. The lineage was said to be broken, the blood of the Great Mother spilled for the last time. — Sarah Warden

He created waterfalls for her out of the morning dew, and from the colored pebbles of a meadow stream he made a necklace more beautiful than emeralds, sadder than pearls. She caught him in her net of silken hair, she carried him down, down, into deep and silent waters, past obliteration. He showed her frozen stars and molten sun; she gave him long, entwined shadows and the sound of black velvet. He reached out to her and touched moss, grass, ancient trees, iridescent rocks; her fingertips, striving upwards, brushed old planets and silver moonlight, the flash of comets and the cry of dissolving suns. — Robert Sheckley

To the Muses
Whether on Ida's shady brow,
Or in the chambers of the East,
The chambers of the sun, that now
From ancient melody have ceas'd;
Whether in Heav'n ye wander fair,
Or the green corners of the earth,
Or the blue regions of the air,
Where the melodious winds have birth;
Whether on crystal rocks ye rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wand'ring in many a coral grove,
Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry!
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc'd, the notes are few! — William Blake

The Dog was a different matter. She was new, or so old that any book that told of her was long since dust. The creature in the fog thought the latter. — Garth Nix

If we're thinking about old civilizations, those that formed a long time ago and there were stars and planets around long before Earth even existed, then these are going to be towards the center of the galaxy. That is the place to look if you think there are ancient civilizations that have made beacons or some other way of attracting our attention. — Paul Davies

The detectives slide back on the digital timeline to the moment when Mendelssohn steps out into the snowstorm: there is something of the Greek epic about it, the old gray man with his walking stick, venturing out, into the snow, out of frame and away, like an ancient word stepping off a page. — Colum McCann

Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes in the ocean, and we find it, copperish, in fire; green air, green skies, are rare. Gray and brown are widely distributed, but there are no joyful swatches of either, or any of exuberant black, sullen pink, or acquiescent orange. Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright thin quick sour new and cool or low deep sweet dark soft slow smooth heavy old and warm: blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling. — William H Gass

Western Australia is covered by granite, the largest single piece of Achaean rock that still lies on the surface of the, of, of the Earth, that's 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. It's one of the most ancient and intact bits of the Earth's crust. — Antony Gormley

Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to versemaking, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject. — Charles Darwin

Near by is an interesting ruin - the meagre remains of an ancient heathen temple - a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old bygone days when the simple child of Nature, yielding momentarily to sin when sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection had shown it him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up his grandmother as an atoning sacrifice - in those old days when the luckless sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving periodical happiness as long as his relations held out; — Mark Twain

Decker went to Greece a few summers ago and showed me pictures from his trip.
"Aren't these awesome?" he had said, pointing out photographs of the ancient ruins.
"Awesome" I agreed, but I felt dizzy. The ruins were just a reminder that what had been was no longer. That everything we are will be gone someday. That I will be forgotten. — Megan Miranda

No ancient story, not even Homer's Iliad or Odyssey, has remained as popular through the course of time. The story of Rama appears as old as civilization and has a fresh appeal for every generation. — David Frawley

Hey! look at us
We're digging and digging
Into stubborn, ancient earth;
We're discovering
Where we came from,
and how we came.

"but where are you going?"

Hey! look at us
We're learning and learning
Into stubborn laws
Of nature and space
And non-nature and non-space;
We're discovering
All there is to know.

"but where are you going?"

Hey! look at us
We're planning and planning
Into stubborn years
Of education and training
And hopes and dreams;
We're discovering
How not to waste any time.

"but where are you going?"

Hey! look at us
We're shiny and bright
And clever and sophisticated
And witty and well-read;
We're discovering
How to really fill up
This old life.

"but where are you going?"

where?

"Yes; where? — Lois A. Cheney

And then I laugh, because it's so ridiculous and so gorgeous and it's all I an do to not melt into a fit of giggles. So what if I'm ninety-three? So what if I'm ancient and cranky and my body's a wreck? If they're willing to accept me and my guilty conscience, why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus?
It's like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this IS home. — Sara Gruen

In the mountains, travelers were reduced to the speed of men on foot. Here, the ancient English sense of journey, 'a day's travel' (French journee), meant the same as the Old Persian word farsang, 'the distance a man could travel on foot in a day,' and the territory was in effect ungovernable.
— Rory Stewart

It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly. — Jerome K. Jerome

Himmler wants to send an expedition to Tibet to look for ancient manuscripts on the Aryans. The man is like a little schoolgirl. What culture is there in an old jug, I ask you? — Adolf Hitler

The walls inside were charred from some ancient fire, blackened and lichened and weathered hard, smelling faintly of a smoke so old there may be no one still alive who could possibly remember the flame. — Jean Hegland

Old Prague was a story-book city caked in grime: ancient, soot-blackened. History lived in every detail: in the deerstalker rooftops and the blue-sparking trams. He wandered the streets in disbelief, photographing everything, images from Kafka crowding into his head. With the turn of every corner it came back to him: the special frisson you get behind enemy lines. — Philip Sington

Yet in the blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-current rather, that is somehow akin to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far away, as driftwood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered: and this spring-tide or current that visits the blood of man comes from the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, the old; it takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to ancient song. — Lord Dunsany

This isn't some kind of inspirational story. Some scrappy, ragtag underdog tale, some pugilistic match where we're the goodhearted gladiator who brings down the oppressive regime that put him in the arena. They get to have that narrative. We are the ones who enslaved whole worlds full of alien inhabitants. We are the ones who built something called a Death Star under the leadership of a decrepit old goblin who believed in the 'dark side' of some ancient, insane religion. — Chuck Wendig

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school. — Ray Bradbury

Every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls — Robert Walser

I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie. — Dylan Thomas