"I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine"
About this Quote
Nostalgia is doing double duty here: it reads like a toast, but it’s also a quiet manifesto. Goldsmith’s piling up of “old” is more than quaint preference; it’s a rhythmic insistence, a verbal collecting habit. Each item steps from the intimate to the ceremonial: friends and times (private life), manners (public performance), books (the mind’s furniture), wine (pleasure with pedigree). The list flatters age as proof of value, turning durability into a moral aesthetic. “Old” becomes shorthand for vetted, trustworthy, already civilized.
That matters in Goldsmith’s moment. Mid-18th-century Britain was loud with newness: expanding commerce, a ravenous print culture, shifting class manners, and the early churn that would become industrial modernity. To “love everything that’s old” is a genteel form of resistance to novelty’s chaos, a way to declare allegiance to continuity when taste itself was becoming a marketplace. It’s also social positioning. Old friends and old wine are not equally available to everyone; the line subtly advertises a life with time to curate.
The subtext has a sting of self-awareness. You can hear the poet’s wink: “old manners” are as much costume as virtue, and “old books” can be refuge or retreat. Goldsmith, who often wrote about politeness and provincial longing, knows tradition can console even as it constrains. The charm is that the sentence lets you enjoy the comfort of the familiar while hinting that comfort is, inevitably, a kind of choice - and a kind of pose.
That matters in Goldsmith’s moment. Mid-18th-century Britain was loud with newness: expanding commerce, a ravenous print culture, shifting class manners, and the early churn that would become industrial modernity. To “love everything that’s old” is a genteel form of resistance to novelty’s chaos, a way to declare allegiance to continuity when taste itself was becoming a marketplace. It’s also social positioning. Old friends and old wine are not equally available to everyone; the line subtly advertises a life with time to curate.
The subtext has a sting of self-awareness. You can hear the poet’s wink: “old manners” are as much costume as virtue, and “old books” can be refuge or retreat. Goldsmith, who often wrote about politeness and provincial longing, knows tradition can console even as it constrains. The charm is that the sentence lets you enjoy the comfort of the familiar while hinting that comfort is, inevitably, a kind of choice - and a kind of pose.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nostalgia |
|---|
More Quotes by Oliver
Add to List
