“It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.”
Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 14 (pp. 120–121)
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Chinua Achebe63
Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic 1930–2013Related quotes
John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929
Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section VI, p 165 <br class="br">The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)
“Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age”
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Context: Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
“Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show,
We may our ends by our beginnings know.”
John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier
Of Prudence, line 225.
“Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.”
Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian
"Age of Reason" https://archive.is/20130630002019/www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_krystal?currentPage=all by Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker (2007-10-22), p. 103
“Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 27
Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle
Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 16 “Between Drumner and Dremegole” (p. 233)