The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.
A Century of Wisdom is universal and will enrich readers for generations to come.
A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.
Sun Tzu does not need my praise. His work has lived for over two thousand years, and will surely live for another two thousand without any help from me.
I sometimes feel that if your book sells more than 20 years, then there's something in it that you can say, gee, I did something that endures, that's timeless.
That piece has been choreographed so badly so many times. I'm loathe to do it but I may eventually because it is one of the seminal art works of the twentieth century.
A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.
When you do a good film, it will remain forever.
The Wealth of Nations may not be an original book, but it is unquestionably a masterpiece.
It is commonly asserted and accepted that Paradise Lost is among the two or three greatest English poems; it may justly be taken as the type of supreme poetic achievement in our literature.
