“Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles.”

—  Don Marquis

The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles.
It is to old age that we look for reimbursement, the most of us. And most of us look in vain. For the most of us have been wrenched and racked, in one way or another, until old age is the most trying time of all.
In the Almost Perfect State every person shall have at least ten years before he dies of easy, carefree, happy living... things will be so arranged economically that this will be possible for each individual.

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 "Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spi…" by Don Marquis?
Don Marquis photo
Don Marquis 55
American writer 1878–1937

Related quotes

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The Greek “point of view” in both art and chronology has little in common with ours but was much like that of the Middle Ages.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 64

“Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Also quoted in Every Day Is Father's Day: The Best Things Ever Said About Dear Old Dad (1989), p. 150
The Business of Life (1949)

“The late Middle Ages not merely has a successful middle class—it is in fact a middle-class period.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

Anzia Yezierska photo

“The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.”

Anzia Yezierska (1880–1970) American writer

The Fat of the Land, from Hungry Hearts and Other Stories (1920)

“Middle school is for being like everyone else; middle age is for being like yourself. (430)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

John Maynard Keynes photo

“Logic, like lyrical poetry, is no employment for the middle-aged”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), F. P. Ramsey, p. 296
Originally published in The Economic Journal, March 1930. and The New Statesman and Nation, October 3, 1931

“The unity of the Middle Ages as a historical period is quite artificial. In reality they fall into three entirely distinct cultural periods—the natural economy of the early Middle Ages; the courtly chivalry of the high Middle Ages; and the urban bourgeois culture of the late Middle Ages. At any rate, the divisions between these three epochs go deeper than those which mark the beginning and the end of the Middle Ages as a whole.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

Tom Robbins photo

“The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Margaret Mead photo

“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary… to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

As quoted in Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion (1958) by Millard Dale Baughman, p. 69
1950s

Anne Bradstreet photo

“Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.”

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) Anglo-American poet

3.
Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)

Related topics