10 Vincent Starrett Quotes

Vincent Starrett quotes

1. When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.

1. The day before yesterday always has been a glamour day. The present is sordid and prosaic. Time colors history as it does a meerschaum pipe.

2. Only those things the heart believes are true.

3. A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane As night descends upon the fabled street: A lonely hansom splashes through the rain, And ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet. Here though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

4. The day before yesterday has always been a day of glamor, of gilt and glory. The present is sordid and prosaic. Time colors history as it does a meerschaum pipe.

5. But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson...Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment, as one writes? Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea-coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won case...So they still live for all that love them well; in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895.

6. Every new search is a voyage to the Indies, a quest for buried treasure, a journey to the end of the rainbow; and whether or not at the end there shall be turned up a pot of gold or merely a delightful volume, there are always wonders along the way.

7. “Here dwell together still two men of note Who never lived and so can never die: How very near they seem, yet how remote That age before the world went all awry. But still the game’s afoot for those with ears Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo: England is England yet, for all our fears– Only those things the heart believes are true. A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane As night descends upon this fabled street: A lonely hansom splashes through the rain, The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet. Here, though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen ninety-five.”

8. “It is possible that the most misunderstood man upon earth is the collector of books…”

9. “Man wants what he cannot have, or what is difficult to procure, or what he must wade through the blood of other men to get. So with collectors.”