Quotes from Old Filth

Jane Gardam ·  260 pages

Rating: (10.6K votes)


“If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth


“Present us with a silver cup for something when you're a filthy rich lawyer, I dare say? Yes. You'll be a lawyer. Magnificent memory. Sense of logic, no imagination and no brains.”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth


“She wanted to take his hand. Her hardest task now as she grew older in the Ministry was to deal with her longing to be touched - hugged, stroked by anyone, any human being - a friend, a lover, a child or even (and here she scented danger) a servant. Of either sex. She prayed about it, asking that God's encircling arms would bring comfort. They did not”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth


“Judges live with shadows behind them.”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth


“His colleagues at the Bar called him Filth, but not out of irony. It was because he was considered to be the source of the old joke, Failed In London Try Hong Kong. It was said that he had fled the London Bar, very young, very poor, on a sudden whim just after the War, and had done magnificently well in Hong Kong from the start. Being a modest man, they said, he had called himself a parvenu, a fraud, a carefree spirit.
Filth in fact was no great maker of jokes, was not at all modest about his work and seldom, except in great extremity, went in for whims. He was loved, however, admired, laughed at kindly and still much discussed many years after retirement.”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth



“The landing stage stood on its high crooked stilts with only one person watching the boat disappear round the bend of the river—a girl of twelve called Ada, the wet-nurse’s eldest child. As”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth


About the author

Jane Gardam
Born place: in Coatham, North Yorkshire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date July 11, 1928
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“be. It just didn’t make sense. She thought about Haley. The rumble of an eighteen-wheeler grew closer, and she opened her eyes. The rig pulled”
― Jennifer Jaynes, quote from Never Smile at Strangers


“Don't show emotion." Kurt Löwe gave his son a rough shake, "Don't you ever show emotion. Tears are weakness. And I won't have any son of mine being weak. You're going to stand here until you top crying.”
― Ryan Graudin, quote from Blood for Blood


“All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' — which is just another way of saying that you can't.”
― Richard Feynman, quote from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character


“...there being a god, that god must be worshiped. Worship means raising the god above the individual, and liturgies often make the point that the individual is less than nothing compared to the deity. If this be done, then, when the god is invoked, the individual has so little worth that he or she may be sacrificed for the needs of the god....
And who speaks for the god? If all people do, then no one does, and there is no god. If the people accept a priesthood, or the equivalent, then those priests exercise whatever power that god's believers grant that god over them, and that elite may cause an individual to be worth less, to be exiled, or even to die or to be killed. Yet such powers do not come from a deity.
In modern history and science, never has there been a verified occasion of a god appearing or demonstrating the powers ascribed throughout history to deities. Always, there is a prophet who speaks for the god. Why cannot the god speak? If a god is omnipotent, then the god can speak. If he cannot, then that god is not omnipotent. Often the prophets say that a god will only speak to the chosen, the worthy.
Should a people accept a god who is either too powerless to speak, or too devious and skeptical to appear? Or a god who will only accept those who swallow a faith laid out by a prophet who merely claims that deity exists—without proof? Yet people have done so, and have granted enormous powers to those who speak for god.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., quote from The Parafaith War


“I suppose, like most young people nowadays, boredom is what you dread most in the world, and yet, I can assure you, there are worse things.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Towards Zero


Interesting books

Mostly Harmless
(88.7K)
Mostly Harmless
by Douglas Adams
November 9
(69.4K)
November 9
by Colleen Hoover
Feed
(44.5K)
Feed
by Mira Grant
The Bookseller of Kabul
(35.6K)
The Bookseller of Ka...
by Åsne Seierstad
Raised by Wolves
(26.1K)
Raised by Wolves
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Post Office
(73.6K)
Post Office
by Charles Bukowski

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.