Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Antiquity
There were giants in the earth in those days.
Genesis. VI. 4.
Antiquity, what is it else (God only excepted) but man’s authority born some ages before us? Now for the truth of things time makes no alteration; things are still the same they are, let the time be past, present, or to come.
Those things which we reverence for antiquity what were they at their first birth? Were they false?—time cannot make them true. Were they true?—time cannot make them more true. The circumstances therefore of time in respect of truth and error is merely impertinent.
John Hales (“The Ever Memorable”)—Of Inquiry and Private Judgment in Religion.
The ancient and honorable.
Isaiah. IX. 15.
With sharpen’d sight pale Antiquaries pore,
Th’ inscription value, but the rust adore.
This the blue varnish, that the green endears;
The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.
Pope—Epistle to Mr. Addison. L. 35.
My copper-lamps, at any rate,
For being true antique, I bought;
Yet wisely melted down my plate,
On modern models to be wrought;
And trifles I alike pursue,
Because they’re old, because they’re new.
Prior—Alma. Canto III.
Remove not the ancient landmark.
Proverbs. XXII. 28; XXIII. 10.
There is nothing new except that which has become antiquated.
Motto of the Revue Rétrospective.
Nor rough, nor barren, are the winding ways
Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers.
Thomas Warton—Written in a blank Leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon.