Quotes about age
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“That's what happens when people reach old age; nobody remembers they've been bastards too.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Prisoner of Heaven

Source: The Prisoner of Heaven

“They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life.”

Alice Munro book The Moons of Jupiter

Source: The Moons of Jupiter

Life

“To tell a woman who is forty, "You look like sixteen," is boloney. The blarney way of saying it is "Tell me how old you are, I should like to know at what age women are the most beautiful.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Women, Beauty, Way

“I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Sun

“There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Freedom (1908)
Source: Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes

Solitude, Freedom, Wine

“In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Men, People, Religion, Night

“In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Dreams, Personality

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”

Bertrand Russell book A History of Western Philosophy

Source: A History of Western Philosophy

Study

“To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Statement from unpublished notes for the Preface to Opticks (1704) quoted in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1983) by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643

Nature

“Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

As quoted in Jet magazine Vol. 58, No. 1 (August 1992)

Thinking

“With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Wisdom

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety."
Antony and Cleopatra (II. ii) ~William Shakespeare”

William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra

Source: Antony and Cleopatra

“Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Perseverance

“When I was your age I knew nothing about the world or my place in it. I figured I'd be someone's wife, then someone's mother. It never occurred to me to be someone myself.”

Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star

Source: Every Soul a Star

World

“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XII: Of Alexander Crummell

Men, Truth

“Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Happiness, Birthday

“Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Variant: A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Birthday, Birthday, For Wife

“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

Learning, Childhood, Falseness

“Age considers; youth ventures.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Youth

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Love, Life, Time, Cute

“We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.”

Keith Richards book Life

Source: Life

Youth, Parting

“Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Learning

“Raoul: Age and treachery!
Neal: Youth and skill!”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Source: Trickster's Choice

Youth

“Books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when you and I are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Books

“You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman… I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage…

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Women, World, Religion, Food

“The key is never, never work. Nothing is more aging than work. It's not only the strain of getting up in the morning for work, but it's the resentment that settles on your face”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Turns Fifty

Religion

“It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

Death, People, Disease, Way

“We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

God, Dreams

“Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Lady Bracknell, Act III
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Women, Birth, Birthday

“The first rule that a geisha is taught, at the age of nine, is to be charming to other women… Every girl in the world should have geisha training.”

Diana Vreeland (1903–1989) American magazine editor

Women, World, Girl, Training

“Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Remarks at the Annual Salute to Congress Dinner http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/20481b.htm (4 February 1981) 1980s, First term of office (1981–1985) Variant: Thomas Jefferson once said, "We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works." And ever since he told me that I stopped worrying. Context: Thomas Jefferson made a comment about the Presidency and age. He said that one should not worry about one's exact chronological age in reference to his ability to perform one's task. And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

People, Dreams, Birthday, Graduation

“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

Life, Wisdom, Youth

“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.”

Oscar Wilde book Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)

Birthday

“Being responsible is taking ownership of your life. It means you have taken the first radical step to becoming a complete human being—fully conscious and fully human. In taking responsibility and beginning the journey toward conscious living, you are putting an end to the age-old patterns of assigning blame outward or heavenward. You have begun the greatest adventure life has to offer: the voyage inward.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Life

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spent ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air everyday.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

People, Holiday

“The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs… has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

World, Question, Parting

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Jaques, Act II, scene vii.
Variant: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)

Women, Men, World, Time

“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 3

Wisdom

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

“What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"Jochanan Hakkadosh" (1883).
Source: Jocoseria

Youth

“All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 3: A Free Man's Worship Context: Such... but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. Context: That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

“At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

“Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

Men

“For while directly we say that it [the length of human life] is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Life

“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Variant: In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Source: Beyond Good and Evil

People, Madness

“Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.”

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989) American historian and author

Source: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

History, Time

“Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Men, Faith

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Marriage, Question, Time, Personality

“Old age is the lubricant of belief. When death knocks at the door, skepticism flies out the window. A serious cardiovascular fright and a person will even believe in Little Red Riding Hood.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Death, Personality

“Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Youth

“Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Wisdom, Faith, Learning, Waiting

“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

People, World, Fear, Beauty

“And yet, anything real, anything strong, was never easy. She'd been taught from an early age that the things that mattered most were the hardest to obtain.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Strong

“Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Funny, Birthday

“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”

James A. Michener book Space

Space (1982)

People, Light

“Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

World, Thinking, Sad

“Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Happiness, Pleasure

“You must find a boy your own age. Someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered. Someone whose fingers are a poem.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Beauty, Boy, Lovers

“Is someone different at age 18 or 60? I believe one stays the same.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

“When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“After the tests [Nuclear tests by India], I had said there was no imminent danger to India's security environment which necessitated us to undertake the tests. But the tests have taken place. Therefore, naturally, as a member of the nation, I have to see the situation in the post-nuclear age. It is now no use discussing whether the tests should have been undertaken or not. But India's nuclear policy from 1988, in fact from 1974, is totally justified.”

I. K. Gujral (1919–2012) Indian politician

The Rediff Interview/I K Gujral

Nature

“The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Star

“Back in the old days, when I was a child, we sat around the family table at dinner time and exchanged our daily experiences…. It wasn't very organized, but everyone was recognized and all the news that had to be told was told by each family member. We listened to each other and the interest was not put on; it was real. … A child needs to be listened to and talked to at 3 and 4 and 5 years of age … Parents should not wait for the sophisticated conversation of a teenager.”

Bob Keeshan (1927–2004) United States Marine

Essay in The New York Times (1979); as quoted in "Bob Keeshan, Creator and Star of TV's 'Captain Kangaroo,' Is Dead at 76" in The New York Times (24 January 2004) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/24/arts/bob-keeshan-creator-and-star-of-tv-s-captain-kangaroo-is-dead-at-76.html?pagewanted=all

Family, Parent, Time, Waiting

“Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Death, Friendship, Pleasure, Soul

“Be brave! Let's remember our duty and perform it without complaint. There will be a way out. God has never deserted our people. Through the ages Jews have had to suffer, but through the ages they've gone on living, and the centuries of suffering have only made them stronger. The weak shall fall and the strong shall survive and not be defeated!”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

11 April 1944
(1942 - 1944)

God, People, Way, Strong

“There is no virtue they should be excited to, nor fault they should be kept from, which I do not think they may be convinced of; but it must be by such reasons as their age and understandings are capable of, and those propos'd always in very few and plain words.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 81
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Understanding, Thinking

“Even the asexual has a deviation - his asexuality. It is far more abnormal to have a lack of sexual desire (unless illness or old-age, or another valid reason has caused the wane) than it is to be sexually promiscuous. However, if a Satanist chooses sexual sublimination above overt sexual expression, that is entirely his own affair. In many cases of sexual sublimination (or asexuality), any attempt to emancipate himself sexually would prove devastating to the asexual. Asexuals are invariably sexually sublimated by their jobs or hobbies. All the energy and driving interest which would normally be devoted to sexual activity is channeled into other pastimes or into their chosen occupations. If a person favors other interests over sexual activity, it is his right, and no one is justified in condemning him for it. However, the person should at least recognize the fact that this is a sexual sublimation.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Personality

“The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature, "Quotation".
Misattributed, Isaac D'Israeli
Variant: The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

Wisdom

“In youth we learn; in age we understand.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

In der Jugend lernt, im Alter versteht man. p. 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=DOEPAAAAQAAJ&q=%22In+der+Jugend+lernt+im+Alter+versteht+man%22&pg=PA13#v=onepage Aphorisms (1880/1893)

Youth, Understanding, Learning

“Age after age, history repeats itself when men and women, in their ignorance, limitations and pride, sit in judgment over the God-incarnated man who declares his Godhood, and condemn him for uttering the Truths they cannot understand. He is indifferent to abuse and persecution for, in his true compassion he understands, in his continual experience of Reality he knows, and in his infinite mercy he forgives.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Meher Baba’s Call (1954)

Women, Men, God, Truth

“I think I have made it clear that I never intended to make enemies. But in an age when anti-foreign sentiment was running high, it was unavoidable that in my position as an advocate of open intercourse and free adoption of Western culture, I should make some adversaries.”

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur and journalist who founded Keio University

Source: The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi (1897), Ch. XI.

Thinking

“We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Symbolic Life (1953); also in Man and His Symbols (1964)

God, Dreams

“So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work. Many a year I have thought and pondered, lost myself in speculations and theories, considering man as a mass moved by a force, viewing his inexplicable movement in the light of a mechanical one, and applying the simple principles of mechanics to the analysis of the same until I arrived at these solutions, only to realize that they were taught to me in my early childhood. These three words sound the key-notes of the Christian religion. Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement. These are the only three solutions which are possible of that great problem, and all of them have one object, one end, namely, to increase human energy. When we recognize this, we cannot help wondering how profoundly wise and scientific and how immensely practical the Christian religion is, and in what a marked contrast it stands in this respect to other religions. It is unmistakably the result of practical experiment and scientific observation which have extended through the ages, while other religions seem to be the outcome of merely abstract reasoning. Work, untiring effort, useful and accumulative, with periods of rest and recuperation aiming at higher efficiency, is its chief and ever-recurring command. Thus we are inspired both by Christianity and Science to do our utmost toward increasing the performance of mankind. This most important of human problems I shall now specifically consider.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Peace, Religion, Food, Problem

“Those American comics themselves were heavily influenced by Keaton’s comedies, Mack Sennett, those sorts of films from the golden age of comedy. The gagmen that appeared there, for example Roscoe Arbuckle or Ben Turpin, there were lots of comics that used their style, their faces just as is. Especially Chaplin with his bowed legs and over-sized shoes. Those sorts of features were used directly in comics. In that era, all American cartoonists imitated the stars of comedy. That is what I worked so hard at copying, and so that’s why my comics are bowlegged and big-shoed. At the level of content too I was deeply influenced by the strong social caricatures of Chaplin’s comedies, the tears mixed with the laughter. The biggest influence of all was the rhythm.”

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

Source: http://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/ Tezuka Osamu and American Comics

Shoe, Star, Tear, Laughter

“The electronic age is a world in which causes and effects become almost interchangeable, as in music structures.”

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

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 99

World, Music

“As people age, they confuse changes in themselves with changes in the world, and changes in the world with moral decline—the illusion of the good old days.”

Steven Pinker book The Sense of Style

p 4
The Sense of Style (2014)

People, World, Change

“Superficial knowledge … is hurtful to those who possess true genius; for it necessarily draws them away from their main object, wastes their industry over details and subjects foreign to their needs and natural talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. In all ages there have been men of very moderate intelligence who knew much, and so on the contrary, men of the highest intelligence who knew very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 178.

Men, Intelligence, Nature, Knowledge

“What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"The Flight of the Duchess", line 881.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

Youth

“Successful men of all the ages have learned to multiply themselves by gathering thought energy into a high potential and using it in the direction of the purpose intended. Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men’s lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man’s life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws. The geniuses have learned how to gather thought energy together to use for transforming their conceptions into material forms. The thinking of creative and successful men is never exerted in any direction other that that intended. That is why great men produce a prodigious amount of work, seemingly without effort and without fatigue. The amount of work such men leave to posterity is amazing. When one considers such men of our times as Edison, Henry Ford or Theodore Roosevelt, one will find the three characteristics I have mentioned common to every one of them.”

Walter Russell (1871–1963) American philosopher

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe

Life, Men, Thinking, Effort

“The dreary alternative of agnosticism, which the young students are taught to accept as the final word of science on the grave mysteries of life and thought, and man’s hopes of personal communion with God are laughed away to make room for an inane faith in evolution and the law of collective development and progress…. Hindu students especially need the strengthening influence which faith in God, and in Conscience as His voice in the human heart alone, can give. The national mind can not live in agnosticism. The experiment was tried once on a large scale by the greatest moral teacher of this or any other age. The failure of Buddhism is a warning that such teaching can have no hold on the national thought.”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

Religion had important place in his life is indicated in his admonishing Professor Selby (also a professor in the Deccan College) notes on a published ”Notes of Lectures on Butelr’s Anaology and Sermons" quoted in pages=105-106

Life, God, Faith, Law

“!-- The Church needs this extraordinary moment. I’m not saying this extraordinary time is good for the Church … no, no. I’m saying the Church needs this extraordinary time. --> In our age of profound change, the Church is called to offer its unique contribution, by making visible the signs of the presence and closeness of God. And the Jubilee is a favorable time for us all, for in contemplating the Divine Mercy, which surpasses every human limitation and shines on the darkness of sin, we can become more convincing and effective witnesses.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2010s, Address to the United States Congress, Mercy Is 'What Pleases God Most

God, Change, Time

“The overdevelopment of the maternal instinct is identical with that well-known image of the mother which has been glorified in all ages and all tongues. This is the motherlove which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, 'oyous and untiring giver of life-mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead. Mother is motherlove, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are? The attempt to say these things has always been made, and probably always will be; but a sensitive person cannot in all fairness load that enormous burden of meaning, responsibility, duty, heaven and hell, on to the shoulders of one frail and fallible human being-so deserving of love, indulgence, understanding, and forgiveness-who was our mother. He knows that the mother carries for us that inborn image of the mater nature and mater spiritualis, of the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

Love, Life, Fate, Children

“There is a wide knowledge gap between us and the developed world in the West and in Asia. Our only choice is to bridge this gap as quickly as possible, because our age is defined by knowledge.”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Quoted in John Leyne, "Dubai ruler in vast charity gift," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6672923.stm BBC News (2007-05-19)

World, Knowledge

“The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting room where one knows his way in the dark.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Youth, Way, Heart

“All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Source: The Integration of the Personality (1939), p. 72

God

“The past was real. The present, all about me, was unreal, unnatural, repellent. I saw the big ships lying in the stream… the home of hardship and hopelessness; the boats passing to and fro; the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls; the peopled beach; the large hide houses, with their gangs of men; and the Kanakas interspersed everywhere. All, all were gone! Not a vestige to mark where one hide house stood. The oven, too, was gone. I searched for its site, and found, where I thought it should be, a few broken bricks and bits of mortar. I alone was left of all, and how strangely was I here! What changes to me! Where were they all? Why should I care for them — poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and the beachcombers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck "When for a moment, like a drop of rain/He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan/Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown." The lighthearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men, if the seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor's life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men have bowed themselves, and the earth or sea has covered them. How softening is the effect of time! It touches us through the affections. I almost feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear — the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates! Death, change, distance, lend them a character which makes them quite another thing.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“For democracy is more than just elections. True democracy, real prosperity, lasting security -- these are neither simply given, nor imposed from the outside. They must be earned and built from within. They must be earned and built from within. And in that age-old contest of ideas -- between freedom and authoritarianism, between liberty and oppression, between solidarity and intolerance -- Poland’s progress shows the enduring strength of the ideals that we cherish as a free people. Here we see the strength of democracy: Citizens raising their voices, free from fear. Here we see political parties competing in open and honest elections. Here we see an independent judiciary working to uphold the rule of law. Here in Poland we see a vibrant press and a growing civil society that holds leaders accountable -- because governments exist to lift up their people, not to hold them down.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)

People, Fear, Law, Democracy

“Study for a bust of Mr Erik Satie painted by himself, with a thought: I came into the world very young in an age that was very old.”

Erik Satie (1866–1925) French composer and pianist

Étude pour un buste de M. Erik SATIE peint par lui-même, avec une pensée: je suis venu au monde très jeune dans un temps très vieux.
Written to accompany a self-portrait caricature drawn by himself - see image
General quotes

World, Study, Painting

“I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release. Added to this (proh dolor! [O misery! ]) the sight of my right eye — that eye whose labors (dare I say it) have had such glorious results — is for ever lost. That of the left, which was and is imperfect, is rendered null by continual weeping.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Letter to Élie Diodati (4 July 1637), as translated in The Private Life of Galileo : Compiled primarily from his correspondence and that of his eldest daughter, Sister Maria Celeste (1870) http://books.google.com/books?id=ixUCAAAAYAAJ by Mary Allan-Olney, p. 278 Other quotes

Hope

“Pimen [writing in front of a sacred lamp]:
One more, the final record, and my annals
Are ended, and fulfilled the duty laid
By God on me a sinner. Not in vain
Hath God appointed me for many years
A witness, teaching me the art of letters;
A day will come when some laborious monk
Will bring to light my zealous, nameless toil,
Kindle, as I, his lamp, and from the parchment
Shaking the dust of ages will transcribe
My true narrations.”

Aleksandr Pushkin Boris Godunov

(Variant translation):
One more story, just one more,
And then my history's completed,
All my chronicles written down
And my sinner's debt repaid to God.
Not for nothing.
The Lord appointed me to bear witness
For many many years and it was he
Taught me the art of creating books.
One day, in the far future,
some hard-working monk
Will find my painstaking,
anonymous writings.
He'll light his lamp,
as I light mine,
He'lll shake the dust of centuries from these scrolls.
Then he'll copy out, carefully, these true accounts,
So the descendants of today's Christians
May know the past of their native land
Remember their mighty Tsars warmly
For their glory and their knidness
And our Lord's mercy on their sins and crimes.
In my old age I live my life anew.
Pushkin, Alexander (2012). Pushkin's Boris Gudunov. Oberon Books.
Boris Godunov (1825)

God, Art, Light

“It has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Fragments of a Tariff Discussion" (1 December 1847)
1840s

World

“Democracy will win -- because a government’s legitimacy can only come from citizens; because in this age of information and empowerment, people want more control over their lives, not less; and because, more than any other form of government ever devised, only democracy, rooted in the sanctity of the individual, can deliver real progress.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Democracy

Quotes about age page 2

Quotes about age
page 2