The Old Breed Quotes & Sayings

Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. — Joan Didion

There were always dog walkers out & about. Sometimes they even stopped for a chat while the various mutts inspected each other. Rebus would be asked how old his dog was.
No idea.
The breed, then ?
Mongrel.
And all the while, he would be thinking about cigarettes. — Ian Rankin

He's getting old. I don't count the years. I don't multiply by seven. They bred dogs for everything else, even diving for fish, why didn't they breed them to live longer, to live as long as a man? — Peter Heller

We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed - selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? — John Steinbeck

Stick to the old truths and the old paths, and learn their di- vineness by sick-beds and in every-day work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion or practical usefulness. — Charles Kingsley

Ideas and thoughts are like genes ... more you keep inside yourself more it multply with same species consuming your whole energy to breed to produce same old ideas and thoughts again and again until it kills you. So, let it be interact with other species..take it out ... make reaction with other peoples's thoughts and ideas and produce something new ... produce new energy..new thoughts..new perceptions ... — Jagdish Poudel

...this would be my greatest fear: imagination giving up before the body does. I guess I'm not alone in this. Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying. — Fredrik Backman

Statistics show that the nature of English crime is reverting to its oldest habits. In a country where so many desire status and wealth, petty annoyances can spark disproportionately violent behaviour. We become frustrated because we feel powerless, invisible, unheard. We crave celebrity, but that's not easy to come by, so we settle for notoriety. Envy and bitterness drive a new breed of lawbreakers, replacing the old motives of poverty and the need for escape. But how do you solve crimes which no longer have traditional motives? — Christopher Fowler

Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I made a sudden decision. "and my dog has followed me from town and cought up with us here. I left him with friends, but he must have chewed his rope. here, boy, come to heel."
I'll chew your heel off for you, Nighteyes offerd savagely, but he came, following me out into the cleared yard.
"Damn big dog," Nick observed. He leaned forward. "looks more than half a wolf to me."
"Some in Farrow have told me that. It's a buck breed. We use them for harding sheep."
You will pay for this. I promise you.
In answer I leaned down to pat his shoulder and then scratch his ears. Wag your tail, Nighteyes.
"He's a loyal old dog. I should have known he wouldn't be left behind."
The things i endure for you. He wagged his tail. Once. — Robin Hobb

For they who can come through this - and, as I say, there can only be a few, what can there be that they can not come through? And so I see in old Europe a new and commanding breed rising up, fearless and fabulous, unsparing of blood and sparing of pity, inured to suffering the worst and to inflicting it and ready to stake all to atain their ends - a race that builds machines, to whom machines are not soulless iron, but engines of might which it controls with cold reason and hot blood. This puts a new face on the world. — Ernst Junger

The BBC is very much in thrall to all this techno cross-fertilisation, in much the same way that print journalists are now encouraged to blog. To the point where there is an emerging breed of sub-editors who take perfectly well-written and punctuated original copy and rewrite it so that it resembles a text message written by a 14-year-old under the influence of Bacardi Breezers. — Kathryn Flett

A fascinating breed, Old Etonians. Impeccable in their social skills and very portable - you can put them anywhere, and they are absolutely charming. — Laura Wade

The playboy is not necessarily a man who has many girlfriends, or a man who has many women, or a man who has slept with many women. That is old. But there is a new breed of the playboy and he is the man who remains single in attempts to make every woman feel as if he belongs to her, he remains a virgin in order to make every woman feel like she will be the first one, and in the end he may choose a very unattractive woman to adorn his side, so that in all circumstances, he will shine as the more beautiful one. This is the new breed of playboy. And it is a very evil one. — C. JoyBell C.

I was part of your train but my railroad car was disconnected and
switched at the track, and now my friends and I are on a separate journey
learning how not to rock the lifeboat, sending out a patient S.O.S to you for
help. I reach out with love, possibly one of a dying breed, the old survival of the fittest theory, or perhaps I am throwing you a lifeline from my Rectangular Bubble. — Ann Lloyd

I happen to be of an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman
which means I can be a real revolving son of a bitch when it suits me. — Robert A. Heinlein

A long time ago, in a town with which I used to be familiarly acquainted, there dwelt an elderly person of grim aspect, known by the name and title of Doctor Grimshawe, whose household consisted of a remarkably pretty and vivacious boy, and a perfect rosebud of a girl, two or three years younger than he, and an old maid of all work, of strangely mixed breed, crusty in temper and wonderfully sluttish in attire. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Lee went on, That's why I include myself. We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed - selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal - all of us. You aren't very different. — John Steinbeck

Old breed? New breed? There's not a damn bit of difference so long as it's the Marine breed. — Chesty Puller

I was twenty-eight years old and I'd been around the block enough to know that sooner or later every romance turns into a negotiation. It's a matter of give and take. Give too little and you breed resentments, take too little and you start feeling used. How does a candlelight dinner stack up against changing the oil in her car? Is getting a blowjob worth the same as giving her a back rub? Before long you're both keeping a ledger. Tallying things up. — James Whitfield Thomson

There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation. — Francis Galton

He was the old breed of Filipino, almost extinct, who required that he deserve what he received; who would feel guilt, not only shame or embarrassment; who accounted for each day in the office and observed public trust as if it were a word of God. But even God was nowhere. The new theology proclaimed him dead. Long live Man! Love live Me! — Linda Ty-Casper

It was an old song, old as the breed itself - one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear any mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages. — Jack London

I recall an 18-year-old girl named Rachel in Zambia who was given a grant to start a business of her choosing. She decided to breed goats so she could sell the meat and the milk, and donate the kids to orphan children. She herself was an orphan, stepping into young adulthood with no resources, and it was her first opportunity to earn her own money. — Ann Cotton

Do you realise that about two hundred of Twing's heftiest are waiting for you outside to chuck you into the pond?"
"No!"
"Absolutely!"
For a moment the poor chap seemed crushed. But only for a moment. There has always been something of the good old English bulldog breed about Bingo. A strange, sweet smile flickered for an instant over his face.
"It's all right," he said. "I can sneak out through the cellar and climb over the wall at the back. They can't intimidate me! — P.G. Wodehouse

I know your breed; all your fine officials debauch the younger girls who are afraid to lose their jobs: that's as old as Washington. — Christina Stead

Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying. This — Fredrik Backman

...the question of portion size. When I ate Doritos or a Big Mac, I dept on eating and eating, and later experienced McRegret. So why when I ate a fourteen-week-old barred rock [heirloom breed chicken] or a grapefruit did I find it tremendously delicious and yet tremendously satisfying? If these foods tasted better, shouldn't I have just kept on gorging?

Fred Provenza believes the difference comes down to what he calls "deep satiety." "Fundamentally," he told me, "eating too much is an inability to satiate." Wen food meets needs at "multiple levels," it provides a feeling of "completeness" and offers a satisfaction that's altogether different from being stuffed. — Mark Schatzker

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself - one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. — Jack London

The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages - even children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out to be a familiar of the Devil - age and sex hadn't anything to do with it. In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places. — Mark Twain