Holland, Barbara -- In Private LIfe, ch. 7 (1980)
The thousands of possible lives that used to spread out in front of me have snapped shut into one, and all I get is what I’ve got. It’s time to pass on the possibilities, all those deliciously...
View ArticleMartial -- Epigrams [Epigrammata], Book 8, epigram 79 (8.79) [tr. Pott &...
Your lady friends are ill to see, All old or ugly as can be, And in their company you go To banquet, play, and portico; This hideous background you prepare To seem, by contrast, young and fair. [Omnes...
View ArticleGoethe, Johann von -- Faust: a Tragedy [eine Tragödie], Part 1, sc. 2...
Age is no second childhood — age makes plain, Children we were, true children we remain. [Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.] Johann Wolfgang von...
View ArticleJefferson, Thomas -- Letter to John Adams (5 Jul 1814)
But our machines have now been running for 70. or 80. years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring, will be giving way: and however we may...
View ArticleConfucius -- The Analects [論語, 论语, Lúnyǔ], Book 17, verse 26 (17.26) (6th C....
If by the age of forty a man is still disliked there is no hope for him. [年四十而見惡焉、其終也已。] Confucius (c. 551- c. 479 BC) Chinese philosopher, sage, politician [孔夫子 (Kǒng Fūzǐ, K'ung Fu-tzu, K'ung Fu...
View ArticleCox, Marcelene -- “Ask Any Woman” column, Ladies’ Home Journal (May 1960)
Not anything is more responsible for the good old days than the fact that the grownups of one generation always remember the world as it looked to them in their young days, not as it looked to their...
View ArticleOrwell, George -- “Such, Such Were the Joys” (1948)
The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have pass the age of thirty five are joyless grotesques, endlessly...
View ArticleCicero, Marcus Tullius -- De Senectute [Cato Maior; On Old Age], Part 2, ch....
The course of a man’s life is certain. The path that we follow goes in only one direction. Every mile is distinctly marked with its own peculiar characteristic — the vulnerability of infants, the...
View ArticleEuripides -- Bellerophon [Βελλεροφῶν], frag. 291 (TGF) (c. 430 BC) [tr....
My son, young men’s arms are indeed taut for action, but old men’s counsels are better; for time teaches the most subtle lessons. Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatistBellerophon...
View ArticleAnouilh, Jean -- Léocadia [Time Remembered], Act 2, sc. 2 [Duchess] (1939)...
When you’re forty, half of you belongs to the past — and when you’re seventy, nearly all of you — Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) French dramatistLéocadia [Time Remembered], Act 2, sc. 2 [Duchess] (1939) [tr....
View ArticleMilne, A. A. -- The House at Pooh Corner, ch. 10 [Christopher Robin and Pooh]...
“Pooh, promise you won’t forget about me, ever. Not even when I’m a hundred.” Pooh thought for a little. “How old shall I be then?” “Ninety-nine.” Pooh nodded. “I promise,” he said. A. A. Milne...
View ArticleAdams, Douglas -- The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world...
View ArticleJerome, Jerome K. -- “Passing of the Third Floor Back” [The Stranger] (1908)
Nothing — so it seems to me — is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The sweet, tender blossom that flowers in the heart of the young — in hearts such as yours — that,...
View ArticleBurns, Stephen L. -- “Redeemer’s Riddle,” Sword and Sorceress IV (1987) [ed....
The years swarm around me like midges, and though each tiny bite only costs me a single drop of blood, they are so thick I am nearly bled dry. Stephen L. Burns (b. 1953) American author“Redeemer’s...
View ArticleByron, George Gordon, Lord -- Don Juan, Canto 1, st. 213 (1818)
But now at thirty years my hair is gray –– (I wonder what it will be like at forty? I thought of a peruke the other day) My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I Have squander’d my whole summer...
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