“Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.”

—  Nassim Nicholas Taleb, book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 24

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and t…" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb196
Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former t… 1960

Related quotes

José Saramago photo

“The young have the ability, but lack the wisdom, and the old have the wisdom, but lack the ability.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Nem a juventude sabe o que pode nem a velhice pode o que sabe.
Source: The Cave (2000), p. 4 (Vintage 2003)

George Sarton photo

“Erudition without pedantry is as a rare as wisdom itself.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece (1952)

Henry Adams photo

“Average human nature is very coarse, and its ideals must necessarily be average. The world never loved perfect poise. What the world does love is commonly absence of poise, for it has to be amused.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Chuck Palahniuk photo

“Young people want mirrors. Older people want art.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Source: Burnt Tongues

Nicholas Sparks photo

“People want pretty much the same things: They wanted to be happy. Most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future, while most older people believed they lay in the past.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Susan Sontag photo

“Shall I tell you about getting older? When you get older, 45 plus, men stop fancying you. Or put it another way, the men I fancy don't fancy me. I want a young man. I love beauty. So what's new?”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: "Finding fact from fiction", The Guardian (27 May 2000) http://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/may/27/fiction.features

Theodore Kaczynski photo

“To judge from the Internet postings that people have sent me, probably most of what you learned [about me] was nonsense.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Letter to J. N.
The Road to Revolution (2008)

Jack London photo

“He lacked the wisdom, and the only way for him to get it was to buy it with his youth; and when wisdom was his, youth would have been spent buying it.”

Jack London book A Piece of Steak

"A Piece of Steak" in The Best Short Stories of Jack London (1962) ISBN 0-449-30053-6

Kazuo Ishiguro photo

“When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book An Artist of the Floating World

Source: An Artist of the Floating World

André Maurois photo

“The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Art of Writing

Related topics