Books Quote by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

— Anonymous

Classic literature is still something that hangs in the air like a song.

— Anonymous

In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.

— Amy Lowell

“As always with the greatest works, the novel is so many-sided that over time it mirrors back the shifting concerns of those who read…

— Carl F. Hovde

To be a classic, a novel should be original.

— Ruth Rendell

The word 'modern' is a cliche.

— Patrick Cox

What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing…

— Lawrence Clark Powell

A book doesn't have to be a literary classic, of course, to change us forever.

— Pico Iyer

A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

— W. E. B. Du Bois

A classic is a book that remains in print

— Mark Van Doren

The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never…

— Edith Wharton