Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 1.
Source: The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913), The Crowning Hour, I
Context: p>It was ages ago in life's first wonder
I found you, Virgilia, wild sea-heart;
And 'twas ages ago that we went asunder,
Ages and worlds apart.Your luminous face and your hair's dark glory,
I knew them of old by an ocean-stream,
In a far, first world now turned to story,
Now faded back to dream.</p
Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 1.
“And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.”
John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes
Stanza 42
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes
Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac
Edge of Seventeen
Bella Donna (album) (1981)
George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States
But alas! will you not remark that amidst all the wonders recorded in holy writ no instance can be produced where a young Woman from real inclination has prefered an old man — This is so much against me that I shall not be able I fear to contest the prize with you — yet, under the encouragement you have given me I shall enter the list for so inestimable a jewell.
Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette (30 September 1779)
1770s
“What wise or stupid thing can man conceive
That was not thought of in ages long ago?”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust
Act II, The Gothic Chamber
Faust, Part 2 (1832)
“Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now.”
Pericles (-494–-429 BC) Greek statesman, orator, and general of Athens
As quoted in Eternal Greece (1961) by Rex Warner, p. 34
Context: Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true.
George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter
The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)