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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Novelty

Novelty is the storehouse of pleasure.

Ninon de Lenclos.

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.

Pascal.

Novelty is both delightful and deceptive.

Balzac.

Change, change,—we all covet change.

Chamfort.

Newness hath an evanescent beauty.

Heinrich Heine.

Novelty is the great parent of pleasure.

South.

Novelties please less than they impress.

Dickens.

Novelty is an essential attribute of the beautiful.

Beaconsfield.

Human nature craves novelty.

Pliny.

All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance.

Johnson.

Novelty is the foundation of the love of knowledge.

Sydney Smith.

Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand.

Thackeray.

Human nature is fond of novelty.

Pliny the Elder.

  • New customs,
  • Though they be never so ridiculous,
  • Nay, let them be unmanly, yet are follow’d.
  • Shakespeare.

    Such is the nature of novelty that where anything pleases, it becomes doubly agreeable if new; but if it displeases, it is doubly displeasing upon that very account.

    Hume.

    All, with one consent, praise new-born gauds, though they are made and moulded of things past.

    Shakespeare.

    Novelty serves us for a kind of refreshment, and takes off from that satiety we are apt to complain of in our usual and ordinary entertainments.

    Addison.

    In science, as in common life, we frequently see that a novelty in system or in practice, cannot be duly appreciated till time has sobered the enthusiasm of its advocates.

    Maud.

    Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects; and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

    Dr. Johnson.

    The enormous influence of novelty—the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment—is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. And yet, if we try to obtain perpetual change, change in itself will become monotonous.

    Ruskin.

    Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand. The most valuable things, if they have for a long while appeared among us, do not make any impression as they are good, but give us a distaste as they are old. But when the influence of this fantastical humor is over, the same men or things will come to be admitted again by a happy return of our good taste.

    Thackeray.