Book Quote by Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

Temple’s line flatters the reader while quietly issuing a warning: once you’ve lived with the slow, seasoned company of “old books,” the shiny competence of “the new” can start to feel thin. The verb “converses” is the hinge. Old books aren’t treated as museum artifacts or required reading; they’re companions that talk back, argue, ramble, contradict themselves, and occasionally offend. That kind of relationship trains a particular palate: patience for long sentences, tolerance for ambiguity, an ear for rhetoric, and an appetite for ideas that don’t arrive pre-chewed.

“Hard to please” is doing double duty. On its face, it’s a badge of discernment: classics raise standards. Underneath, it hints at a social cost. If you form your taste in dialogue with writers who had fewer incentives to be instantly legible or market-friendly, contemporary work can register as rushed, trend-chasing, or overly certain of its own relevance. Temple is naming a mismatch between tempos: old books assume you will come to them; new books often feel obliged to come to you.

Contextually, the sentiment fits a long tradition of early modern and Enlightenment anxiety about novelty. Printing, expanding literacy, and a growing market for “new” titles made freshness a selling point. Temple’s skepticism reads less like nostalgia for dust and more like suspicion of the churn: when newness becomes the pitch, depth becomes optional. The subtext isn’t that modern writing can’t be great; it’s that greatness rarely advertises itself as “new.”