Quotes about age
page 42

“The achievements of the age, the aspirations of the millions, the readiness to share, the aid agencies, organizations like the United Nations and the various international groupings which, behind the scenes, unite people with people and give a sense of internationalism and co-operation, will be maintained and will grow; they can only flourish in the new situation. But those which stand in the way, those narrow, nationalistic structures based on competition, market forces and greed, will find it impossible to stand against the “onslaught of the new”, the ideas of the new time.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Awakening of Humanity (2008)

People, Way, Idea, Sense

“We haven't accepted — we can't really believe — that the most characteristic product of our age of scientific miracles is junk, but that is so. And we still think and behave as though we face an unspoiled continent, with thousands of acres of living space for every man. We still sing "America the Beautiful" as though we had not created in it, by strenuous effort, at great expense, and with dauntless self-praise, an unprecedented ugliness.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"The Rise"
The Long-Legged House (1969)

Beauty, Thinking, Effort, Singing

“[I'm] (probably) the most significant historian of early medieval Europe under the age of 60 anywhere in the world... [T]hat's not (just) me being cocky, but a pretty sober assessment of the range and quality of my work.”

Guy Halsall (1964) English historian

Quoted in Lecturer “deeply regrets” offence caused by post, Blumsom, Amy, 4 December 2012, Nouse, January 27, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20121206054518/http://www.nouse.co.uk/2012/12/04/lecturer-deeply-regrets-offence-caused-by-post/, 6 December 2012 http://www.nouse.co.uk/2012/12/04/lecturer-deeply-regrets-offence-caused-by-post/, Quotaes, VLE (2012)

World

“There was no Germanic world before the Carolingian age.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. 55

World

“The myth of the Germans before Germany is hard to suppress because, owing to its great age and genesis in the sources themselves.”

Walter Goffart (1934) American historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Tides (2010), p. 51

“I hope that one day we will be seen for the people we are, not for our race, gender, age or nationality.”

Roberta Flack (1937) American singer

On being told that her style was “too white” in “Roberta Flack: 'My music is my expression of what I feel in a moment'” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/21/roberta-flack-interview-music-grammys in The Guardian (2020 Jan 21)

People, Hope

“People are aging with time.
Reflections on our contribution in this life is necessary.
Sincere words are precious.
For people can never have enough of pearls of wisdom.”

Deng Feng-Zhou (1949) Chinese poet, Local history writer, Taoist Neidan academics and Environmentalist.

(zh-TW) 日月催人老，今生有幾何？
真言誠可貴，感語不嫌多。

"Occasional thoughts" (偶感)

Source: Deng Feng-Zhou, "Deng Feng-Zhou Classical Chinese Poetry Anthology". Volume 6, Tainan, 2018: 88.

Life, Wisdom, People, Time

“And fourteen—fourteen is such a fearful age, when you find out so fast what you’re capable of being, but also what a toll the world expects.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Imaginary Countries (p. 204; first published in The Harvard Advocate (Winter 1973)
Short fiction, Orsinian Tales (1976)

World, Fear

“Jail? Jeez. When I was a teenager, I was in and out of jail. One fight there, another here – at the age of 16, I killed someone. A person. During a fight. Stabbing. I was 16. Just because we looked at each other.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Original: (tl) Kulong? Ay 'sus. Kulong, eh noong teenager ako pasok-labas-pasok ako sa kulungan. Rambol dito, rambol – at the age of 16, may pinatay na ako. Tao talaga. Rambol. Saksak. Noong 16 years old iyon, nagkatinginan lang. Duterte claims he stabbed someone to death as a 16-year-old https://www.rappler.com/nation/187906-rodrigo-duterte-stab-16-years-old(November 9, 2017)

Fight, Personality

“It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them was I eligible as a voter.
Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit...”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Eighth State of the Union Address (1876)

Error, Parting, Training

“Women not girls rule my world
I said they rule my world
Act your age, mama (not your shoe size)
Not your shoe size
Maybe we could do the twirl
U don't have 2 watch Dynasty
2 have an attitude
U just leave it all up 2 me
My love will be your food
Yeah.U don't have 2 be rich
2 be my girl
U don't have 2 be cool
2 rule my world
Ain't no particular sign I'm more compatible with
I just want your extra time and your
Kiss.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Kiss
Song lyrics, Parade Under the Cherry Moon (1986)

Love, Women, World, Making love

“What’s the justification for ancestor worship? You know what happens to a man without modern geriatrics: as he ages his brain cells start to die. Yet people tend to respect him, to listen to him.”

Larry Niven book Protector

Section 1, Chapter 3 (p. 86)
Protector (1973)

People

“There will come a time when humanity will look back on this time as the 'barbarian age.'”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

So far from the possible ideal is the present dying civilization that future men will wonder how, and for so long, were we able to sustain it. Source: A Master Speaks (1985) The end of the 'barbarian age https://share-international.org/archives/Master_--/Mas-end-barbarian.html (April 1999)

Time

“The truly golden age of the people does not lie in the past, but in the future.”

D. N. Jha (1940) Indian historian

quoted from Arun Shourie (2014) Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. HarperCollin

People, Lie, Past, Future

“Looking back to the national anniversary this year and patriotism and national confidence shown by our young generation, the anniversary is possibly a "coming of age ceremonies" of Chinese society's collective maturity.”

Zhang Weiwei (professor) (1957) Chinese professor of international relations

(zh-CN) 回望今年的国庆盛典和我们年轻一代展现出的爱国激情和民族自信，这次庆典也可能就是中国社会走向集体成熟的一个“成人礼”。

https://m.guancha.cn/ZhangWeiWei/2019_10_04_520190.shtml

Confidence, Self-confidence

“The audience I play to really is the bright 14-year-old: someone who is capable of sitting still and listening and watching and feeling for even three hours. I know, as I did at that age, they'll potentially have their lives changed.”

Ian McKellen (1939) British actor

Ian McKellen Tours with Royal Shakespeare, 2007 https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/ian-mckellen-tours-royal-shakespeare-25640/,

Feeling, Change

“It is useless, or almost useless, to offer to Youth the treasures of experience gathered by Age. "When you are my age," says Crabbed Age, "you will know what I know, see as I see."”

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928) British classical scholar, linguist and feminist

Nothing could be more profoundly false. History does not repeat itself. Evolution forbids. When you are my age, you will not know what I know, but something quite different. p. 18 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011434878;view=1up;seq=30 Alpha and omega (1915)

Youth

“There is an old German proverb: "Death has no calendar," which taken in conjunction with our... "Death is no respecter of persons," strongly marks the folk conception... as of one who obeys no rule of time, or of place, or of age, or of sex, or of household...”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

Death, Sex, Time, Personality

“I loved being scared as a kid. I loved the darker side of humanity. That was in my brain, even from a very early age. I was always thinking, “What could be the scariest outcome of this situation?””

Gillian Flynn (1971) American author and critic

My cousins and I were kind of raised in a pack together—all girls. They always wanted to be princesses. I always wanted to be a witch. Or a killer. My head just went in that direction. Maybe because my father was a film professor, I developed a taste for Alfred Hitchcock. Films like Psycho scared me just the right amount. They didn’t haunt my dreams in a terrible way. I like that sensation of being scared. I’ve always been one of those people who wants to know what’s underneath the rock, what’s down the corner, what’s down the blind alley. On processing fear as a child in “GILLIAN FLYNN BRINGS HER MID-WESTERN NOIR TO A BOIL” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/gillian-flynn-brings-her-mid-western-noir-to-a-boil-in-widows in Interview (2018 Nov 12)

Love, Making love, Thinking

“I never talk about age, but I was born singing. My mother, Catalina, told me that at 9 or 10 months of age I’d wake up in the middle of the night, 2 or 3 in the morning, singing "esta muchachita va a trabajar de noche."”

Celia Cruz (1925–2003) Cuban singer (1925-2003)

Pues la viejita no se equivocó. On her first time singing, part of her Interview with Generación Ñ http://generation-ntv.com/writing/celia-cruz-1996 in 1996. A similar statement in shown in the BBC Arena documentary "My Name Is Celia Cruz" https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qmxcl from 1988.

Singing, Night

“C'mon everybody, yeah, this is your life
I'm talking about a revolution we gotta organize
We don't need no segregation, we don't need no race
New age revelation, I think we got a case.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Song lyrics, Controversy (1981)

Life, Thinking

“I think the “young adult” age is such a critical period of our lives. Young adults are still young enough to dream of magic and possibility, yet old enough to think for themselves and to begin to make real change in the world.”

Stacey Lee

On why young adult literature is so important in “Safer Is Not Always Better: An Interview With Stacey Lee” https://parnassusmusing.net/2019/08/13/interview-stacey-lee-downstairs-girl/ in Musing (2019 Aug 13)

World, Making love, Dreams, Thinking

“I am beginning to see the first sign of my increasing age: I dont like to know that my orders have been disobeyed, even when I knew when I gave them that they would be.”

William Faulkner book Go Down, Moses

The Bear section 2 (p. 212)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

“When nations grow old,
the Arts grow cold,
And Commerce settles on every tree:
And the poor and the old
Can live upon gold,
For all are born poor.
Aged sixty-three.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

On Art And Artists (1800) 'On the Foundation of the Royal Academy'
1800s

Art, Tree

“Of all the various ways which the imagination has distorted truth, there is none which has worked so much harm as an exaggerated respect for past ages. This reverence for antiquity is repugnant to every maxim of reason, and is merely the indulgence of a poetic sentiment in favour of the remote and unknown.”

Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) English historian

History of Civilisation in England. Vol 1, 1st pub 1857, also page 100. Worlds Classics , Pub. 1903. London Grant Richards.

Truth, Way, Imagination, Past

“In my Brain are studies & Chambers fill'd with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life;”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Letters Of William Blake https://archive.org/details/lettersofwilliam002199mbp (1956), p. 50 1790s

Life, Books, Study, Painting

“People who have sinned against such a holly place are sure to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds at no distant date in this Kali age in accordance with the verse: Hasadbhih kriyate karma rudadbhir-anubhuyate”

Tipu Sultan (1750–1799) Ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore

People do [evil] deeds smilingly but suffer the consequences crying
Tipu expressing grief against the raid on Sringeri temple and maatha by a contingent of the Marathas, called the Pindaris.
Source: Quoted in Annual Report of the Mysore Archaeological Department 1916 pages 10–11 and 73–6 and History of Tipu Sultan by Mohibbul Hasan, p. 358

People, Suffering, Distant

“Baby, I've never been drunk in public and I never run around with men half my age. The dames I started out with are all batty today. They had their looks and nothing more and now they think they're finished.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

Source: As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

Men, Thinking, Baby

“The time had come for one of those Divine manifestations which from age to age are made for the helping of humanity, when a new impulse is needed to quicken the spiritual evolution of mankind, when a new civilisation is about to dawn.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries (1914), Chapter IV. The Historical Christ

Time, Help

“Everyone's got peer pressure at this age. I mean there's pressure to smoke, there's pressure to do all sorts of stuff. And, um, I've never been affected by peer pressure. Never.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Source: An eighteen-year-old Trudeau on supporting the minority-held position https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B8IrpWVaoE of Québec federalism among his fellow students at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coll%C3%A8ge_Jean-de-Br%C3%A9beuf, late 1980s Context: before leading Liberals

“Damaged little girls are exactly what the porn industry preys upon and depends upon. It is estimated that 90% of porn performers are sexual abuse survivors and the average age of a porn actress is 22.8 years old.”

Shelley Lubben (1968–2019) author, singer, motivational speaker, and former pornographic actress

Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn: The Greatest Illusion on Earth (2010), Ch. II

Girl, Dependency

“The heart of a Mahatma is like the tamarind seed perfectly pure. These Mahatmas are ever young. For a Jnyani, there is no age-idea.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

251
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Idea, Heart

“(en) "I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow. as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today."”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

о религии

Happiness, World, Making love, Peace

“Turn where we may,—within,—around,—the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age,—now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears,—now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings,—now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved,—now, while the heart of England is still sound,—now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away,—now, in this your accepted time,—now in this your day of salvation,—take counsel, not of prejudice,—not of party spirit,—not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency,—but of history,—of reason,—of the ages which are past,—of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1831) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/mar/02/ministerial-plan-of-parliamentary-reform#column_1204 in favour of the Reform Bill 1830s

Wisdom, God, Youth, Law

“The harsh reality is that my sequestered twins are advancing in the opposite direction of my earhair. Mother Nature has me by the balls, literally. They have actually started a race with my ex-wife's tits. And she will prevail, because she will get hers "done" as I continue to disappear into the abyss of recycled toilet brine. In the end, gravity always wins, people. Remember: when you have a heart attack, you fall down, not up.Middle age is upon me, and I don't remember this shit being in the brochure. I have six different doctors on speed dial, and the font size on my smartphone is at ten with a maximum setting of twelve. That doesn't give me much wiggle room for the golden years.”

Brad Garrett (1960) actor, comedian, voice actor

When the Balls Drop https://books.google.com/books?id=lLydBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 (2015), Foreword, "Being Forward."

People, Nature, Reality, Heart

“But an old man of venerable look
(Standing upon the shore amongst the crowds)
His eyes fixed upon us (on ship-board), shook
His head three times, overcast with sorrow's clouds:
And (straining his voice more, than well could brook
His aged lungs: it rattled in our shrouds)
Out of a science, practice did attest,
Let fly these words from an oraculous breast:O glory of commanding! O vain thirst
Of that same empty nothing we call fame!”

Luís de Camões Os Lusíadas

Stanzas 94–95 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); the Old Man of Restelo.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto IV
Original: (pt) Mas um velho d'aspeito venerando,
Que ficava nas praias, entre a gente,
Postos em nós os olhos, meneando
Três vezes a cabeça, descontente,
A voz pesada um pouco alevantando,
Que nós no mar ouvimos claramente,
C'um saber só de experiências feito,
Tais palavras tirou do experto peito:Ó glória de mandar! Ó vã cobiça
Desta vaidade, a quem chamamos Fama!O glory of commanding! O vain thirst
Of that same empty nothing we call fame!

Relation ships, Science, Time, Flying

“I am sick of the governessy attitude of our age, which is coming to be more genuinely presumptuous, nosier and more busybody than the Victorian.”

Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish writer

Source: A Time in Rome (1960), Ch. V, p. 141

“The mothers of all ages are those who have suffered because others suffered; for each of them, self is less sensitive than the sense of her child. Self is not locked up in the maternal heart, there to be cherished, as it is by the egoist, or to be crushed and silenced, as it is by the Saint. In the mother, self is not lost, but loses all its evil by the passionate personal love that distributes it among sons and daughters. Perfect self-less love would perhaps be distributed through the multitude, but a mother is not perfect: nature has so much use for her—separate, family use—that she cannot let her go free from irrational, indispensable partialities and limitings, even injustices, all serving the turn of the race.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. IV. "The Mother", p. 40

Love, Making love, Family, Nature

“Men of genius and wonderful nerve and determination, who in the Dark Ages would have been conquering princes, have... thrown their ability into Commerce and have conquered, not territory and slaves, but trade and its child, money, from any and every part of the world where trade was to be found.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Men, Money, World, Parting

“When we are young, we take a certain pleasure in our infirmities. They seem so new, so rich! With age, they no longer surprise us, we know them too well. Now, without anything unexpected in them, they do not deserve to be endured.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Pleasure

“We tend quite rightly to associate an age with its newest and most original ideas, and there is no harm in this as long as we remember that only a few men, at that time, may have actually held those ideas, and that many decades, often amounting to centuries, may pass before those ideas have seeped down to wider and commoner levels of belief, thought, and feeling.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 6, p. 140

Men, Feeling, Idea, Time

“It is not calling the landed estates, possessed by old prescriptive rights, the 'accumulations of ignorance and superstition', that can support me in shaking that grand title, which supersedes all other title, and which all my studies of general jurisprudence have taught me to consider as one principal cause of the formation of states; I mean the ascertaining and securing prescription. But these are donations made in 'ages of ignorance and superstition.'”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Be it so. It proves that these donations were made long ago; and this is prescription; and this gives right and title.
Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 95
1790s

Support, Study

“Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,—with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

Address on the opening of the Eton Library (1833) as quoted in A History of Inventions, Discoveries and Origins (1846) by John Beckmann, Tr. William Johnston, Vol. 1, frontispiece. https://archive.org/details/historyofinventi01unse/page/n5/mode/2up

Life, Happiness, Books, World

“I [also] know that, on my deathbed, I shall still be believing with one part of my brain that somewhere on every ocean of the world there is a grey, grey ship with three funnels and sixteen-inch guns which can blow out of the water any other navy which is likely to face it. I know it is not so. Indeed, I realised at a relatively early age that it is not so. But that factor – that emotional factor... will not die until I, the carrier of it, am dead.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Institute of Contemporary British History at the London School of Economics (July 1991), quoted in Robert Shepherd, Enoch Powell (1997), p. 9
1990s

World, Water, Relation ships, Parting

“How do we interact with life delicately? Because we're entering a new age of exploration, where we have to take great care, and we have to set examples how we explore. So I've teamed up with roboticist Rob Wood at Harvard University, and we've been designing squishy underwater robot fingers, so we can delicately interact with the marine life down there. The idea is that most of our technologies to explore the deep ocean come from oil and gas and military, who, you know, they're not really caring to be gentle.”

David Gruber American marine biologist

Source: Glow-in-the-dark sharks and other stunning sea creatures https://www.ted.com/talks/david_gruber_glow_in_the_dark_sharks_and_other_stunning_sea_creatures (October 2015)

Life, Idea, Universe

“The idea of the State being a sort of apotheosis of the People, their ultimate expression and good, was invented for the modern age by the German philosopher, Hegel, and both Karl Marx, the father of Communism, and Mussolini, the inventor of Fascism,…”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 102

People, Communication, Idea

“I have seen a German youth camp, housing six thousand children around the age of ten, display in tree-high letters the words: ‘You were born to die for Germany!’ I have seen babies of six and seven, black-shirted and belted, march in Italy in military drill. I have seen children in Russia kindergartens taught how to adjust gas masks and the strategy of trench warfare.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Children, Youth, Tree, Baby

“We have been informed lately that ours will be the lot of Genoa, and Venice, and Holland. But...there is a great difference between the condition of England and those... We have during ages of prosperity created a nation of 34 millions—a nation who are enjoying, and have long enjoyed, the two greatest blessings of civil life—justice and liberty... [A] nation of that character is more calculated to create empires than to give them up, and I feel confident if England is true to herself; if the English people prove themselves worthy of their ancestors; if they possess still the courage and the determination of their forefathers, their honour will never be tarnished and their power will never diminish.”

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

Source: Speech in the Guildhall, London (10 November 1878), quoted in The Times (11 November 1878), p. 10. William Gladstone had written in The North American Review: "It is [America] alone who, at a coming time, can, and probably will, wrest from us that commercial primacy...We have no more title against her than Venice, or Genoa, or Holland, has had against us" ('Kin beyond Sea', The North American Review Vol. 127, No. 264 (Sep. - Oct., 1878), p. 180)

Life, People, Justice, Feeling

“Now, what is meant by the union between Church and State? ... I understand by it that authority is to be not merely political; that Government is to be not merely an affair of force, but is to recognize its responsibility to the Divine Power. Sir, we have discarded the divine right of Kings, and properly discarded it, because the divine right of Kings led to the abuse of supernatural power by individuals; but an intelligent age will never discard the divine right of Government. If Government is not divine, it is nothing. It is a mere affair of the police-office, of the tax-gatherer, of the guard-room.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1868/apr/03/adjourned-debate#column_917 in the House of Commons (3 April 1868)

Intelligence, Understanding

“[T]ogether we shall write an American story of hope, not fear. Of unity, not division. Of light, not darkness. A story of decency and dignity, love and healing, greatness and goodness.May this be the story that guides us, the story that inspires us, and the story that tells ages yet to come that we answered the call of history, we met the moment. Democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch, but thrived, that America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another, and generations to follow.So, with purpose and resolve, we turn to those tasked of our time, sustained by faith, driven by conviction, and devoted to one another and the country we love with all our hearts. May God bless America and may God protect our troops. Thank you, America.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Love, God, Truth, World

“[T]his is America′s day. This is democracy′s day, a day of history and hope, of renewal and resolve. Through a crucible for the ages, America has been tested anew. And America has risen to the challenge. Today we celebrate the triumph, not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. The people, the will of the people, has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded.We′ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Source: 2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

People, Hope, Democracy, History

“Three times I have "gone" to a place that I cannot find words to describe accurately. Again, it is this vision, this interpretation, the temporary visitation to this "place" or state of being that brings the message we have heard so often throughout the history of man. I am sure that this may be part of the ultimate heaven as our religions conceive it It must also be the nirvana, the Samadhi, the supreme experience related to us by the mystics of the ages.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 8. Because the Bible Tells Me So

Religion, History, Relation ships, Time

“There was such a dearth of films like that…And the high-school teen movie is a genre that I love. Everything at that age is so heightened and dramatic, and high-school movies capture that so perfectly. But those films are all white, too; there’s no black teen movie genre that exists in the same way.”

Issa Rae (1985) American actress and writer

On how she didn’t see herself represented in the teen film genre in “Issa Rae: ‘I’ve not started writing season four of Insecure yet. We needed a break’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/13/issa-rae-interview-insecure-little in The Guardian (2019 Apr 13)

Love, Making love, School, Way

“So from the age of 10, I became anorexic, and then bulimic, and then stayed that way for about 20 years, until one day I just said, "Hey, what if this is it? What if this is just what I look like and nothing I do changes that? So how much time would I save if I stopped taking that extra second every time I look in the mirror to call myself a big fat fuck? How much time would I save if I just let myself walk by a plate-glass window without sucking in my gut and throwing back my shoulders? How much time would I save?"”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

And it turns out I save about 97 minutes a week. I can take a pottery class.
From Her Tours and CDs, The Notorious C.H.O. Tour

Way, Change, Time

“Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of short-lived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The delay of the Divine Justice — this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, — this was the soul of their religion.
"The Fugitive Slave Law", a lecture in New York City (7 March 1854), The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904), p. 238

Men, God, Faith, Nature

“For it may be very plausibly urged on their behalf, that it is impossible to extinguish evil until the origin thereof has been discovered and destroyed. This great river of human Time (rivers were expressly created to feed metaphors, allegories, and navigable canals) which comes flowing down thick with filth and blood from the immemorial past surely cannot be thoroughly cleansed by any purifying process applied to it here in the present for the pollution, if not in its very source (supposing it has a source), or deriving from unimaginable remotenesses of eternity indefinitely beyond its source, at any rate interfused with it countless ages back, and is perennial as the river itself. This immense poison-tree of Life, with its leaves of illusion, blossoms of delirium, apples of destruction, surely cannot be made wholesome and sweet by anything we may do to the branchlets and twigs on which, poor insects, we find ourselves crawling, or to the leaves and fruit on which we must fain feed; for the venom is drawn up in the sap by the taproots plunged in abysmal depths of the past. This toppling and sinking house wherein we dwell cannot be firmly re-established, save by re-establishing from its lowest foundation upwards.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part VIII, pp. 93–94
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Life, Tree, Evil, Time

“Of true benevolence, its charms divine,
With other motives to call forth its power,
And its grand triumphs, multiplied beyond
All former bounds, in this its golden age,
Humbly I sing, awed by the holy theme;
A theme exalted, though as yet unsung,
In beauty rich, of inspiration full,
And worthy of a nobler harp than that
From which heroic strains sublimely sound.”

Carlos Wilcox (1794–1827) American poet

Remains of the Rev. Carlos Wilcox: with a memoir of his life (1828), p. 99 https://archive.org/details/remainsofrevcarl00wilc/page/100/mode/2up Poetry

Beauty, Motivation, Singing

“Look, working nine, ten years old at the farm, I was not harmed at all. When a nine-year-old, ten-year-old goes to work somewhere, it's full of people there. Now, when I'm smoking a crack pipe, nobody says anything. [...] But I want to say that I, my older brother, a sister of mine, a little younger, at that age, eight, nine, ten, twelve years, worked on the farm.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In a live social media broadcast on 4 July 2019, defending child labor. Bolsonaro Defends Child Labor https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/07/bolsonaro-defends-child-labor.shtml. Folha de S.Paulo (5 July 2019). 2019

People, Sister

“In the age of wooden television in the South where I grew up, leisure involved sitting on screened porches, smoking cigarettes, drinking iced tea, engaging in conversation, and staring into space. It might also involve fishing. Sometimes the Web does remind me of fishing.”

William Gibson book Distrust That Particular Flavor

"The Net Is a Waste of Time," The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1996.
Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012)

Drink, Fish, Tea

“Suppose we human beings were hunted with traps by a race of giants loo feet high, very ingenious, and absolutely without conscience so far as their treatment of us was concerned. Suppose that, in spite of all our vigilance, we were continually falling into these traps, which were hidden all about us, and compelled in order to escape to eat off our own arms or legs. Suppose that even then one out of every five of us was so ill-starred as to be caught a second time, and ended up, after hours or days of unspeakable agony, by having his head smashed into a jelly by a big club. Suppose we were absolutely helpless in the matter, and that our victimisers had no higher purpose in inflicting these fiendish outrages than to get a scalp or a jawbone to dangle about their demoniacal necks. Suppose, finally, in order to complete the analogy, that these people imagined themselves to be highly civilised and enlightened. What sort of an opinion do you think we would have in the course of ages as to the real character of these people and of their fitness to be the models and superintendents of a planet?”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 70–71

People, Imagination, Star, Thinking

“From the age of eight or nine my mother had me washing dishes on a biscuit tin at the Holyrood.”

Brian McEniff (1942) Irish Gaelic football player and manager

McEniff, the Sunday Tribune, 2004.

“The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"The Age Demanded" in Der Querschnitt (February 1925); as quoted in Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation (1983) by Noel Riley Fitch

Dance

“Old age ain't no place for sissies.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Roz Warren, Rosalind Warren, Women's Lip: Outrageous, Irreverent and Just Plain Hilarious Quotes, Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006, ISBN 1402203918, p. 179.
Attributed

“War taken at the best is a frightful scourge to the human race; but because it is so the wisdom of ages has surrounded it with strict laws and usages, and has required formalities to be observed which shall act as a curb upon the wild passions of man, to prevent that scourge from being let loose unless under circumstances of full deliberation and from absolute necessity. You have dispensed with all these precautions.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1857/mar/03/resolution-moved-resumed-debate-fourth#column_1802 in the House of Commons against the Second Opium War (3 March 1857) 1850s

Wisdom, War, Law, Passion

“Every age before this one has performed or permitted acts that to us are morally stupefying. So unless we have any reason to think we are more reasonable, morally better or wiser than at any time in the past, it is reasonable to assume there will be some things we are presently doing – possibly while flushed with moral virtue – that our descendants will whistle through their teeth at, and say ‘What the hell were they thinking?’”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019)

Hell, Thinking, Time, Past

“We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn; we should strive to transmit to them the best possessions, the truest thought, the noblest sentiments of the age in which we live.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Children

“Sometimes in our activist and production-oriented American society and culture we succumb to pragmatism looking at the Christian life and our sharing in the apostolic mission of the Church as a matter being able to “do” things for Christ, the Church or others. In fact, the Christian life is a gift and a call to truth and love given to us by God. It is first a matter of "being," of simply existing as a person created by God and redeemed by him in Christ. We live out this truth and love in specific ways according to our age, talents, and unique vocation. At no point are the sacraments about what we have done or promise to do for God. They are God's free gift of grace to us. At the same time, these gifts of love entail an obligation to bear witness to God's love in word and deed by our collaboration in freedom with the grace given.”

Álvaro Corrada del Río (1942) Puerto Rican Catholic bishop

Pastoral Reflection on the Sacrament of Confirmation http://www.americancatholicpress.org/Bishop_Corrada_Pastoral_Reflecton%20_on_Confirmation.html (October 7, 2005)

Love, Life, God, Truth

“We are servants of the Crown as well as servants of the people... I am not ashamed to say that in my old age I rejoice in any opportunity which enables me to testify that, whatever may be thought of my opinions, whatever may be thought of my proposals in general politics, I do not forget the service which I have borne for so many years to the illustrious representative of the British Monarchy.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1889/jul/25/the-royal-grants#S3V0338P0_18890725_HOC_142 in the House of Commons (25 July 1889) 1880s

People, Forgetting

“We all grow up. Hopefully, we get wiser. Age brings wisdom, and fatherhood changes one's life completely.”

Frank W. Abagnale (1948) American security consultant, former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist

Life, Wisdom, Change

“Let us specify that the possible gaps in the human mind are due, not to fortuitous causes, but to the very conditions of the "dark age", the kali-yuga, which has as an effect − among other modes of decadence − a progressive weakening of pure intellection and of the ascending tendencies of soul; whence the necessity of the religious revelations, and whence also the problematical phenomenon of gratuitous and divergent philosophies.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[1995, Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy, Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies, 1, 1, 8]
Miscellaneous, Revelation

Soul

“Now we are living in the digital age. I feel very lucky and appreciative that young people now have the opportunity of coming to know the kind of films we shot in the past.”

Brigitte Lin (1954) Taiwanese actress

As quoted in "Brigitte Lin, a timeless national treasure" in Taipei Times (15 May 2018) https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2018/05/15/2003693091

People, Feeling, Past

“The aged are cared for until death; adults are employed in jobs that make full use of their abilities; and children are nourished, educated, and fostered;...orphans... the disabled and the diseased are all well taken care of....”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, A Great Utopia (The World of Da-Tong)

Death, Children, Education, Disease

“Once you wrap your brain around playing your age, it's a very, very positive thing…”

Lou Diamond Phillips (1962) American film, television, and stage actor

On being an older actor in “Lou Diamond Phillips Gets Paternal on 'Prodigal Son'” https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/television/info-2019/lou-diamond-phillips-returns-on-prodigal-son.html in AARP Magazine (2019 Sept 23)

“Friends are admiring my age and health, and asking me the secret to live to such an age in good health. I usually answer them frankly: I have never paid attention to my health and age.”

Peter Chung Hoan Ting (1928) Malaysian catholic priest

Archbishop Emeritus Peter Chung celebrates his 90th birthday http://www.heraldmalaysia.com/news/archbishop-emeritus-peter-chung-celebrates-his-90th-birthday/44331/1 (September 21, 2018)

Health, Secret

“The age of fossil fuels is about to end. There is no replacement for them at hand.”

James Howard Kunstler book The Long Emergency

Source: The Long Emergency (2005), Chapter 2, p. 23.

“A genuine era of happiness is only possible when we aren’t clouded by the uncertainties of aging and when bearing and raising children is truly considered a blessing. No citizen should be left to fear that he or she might not be able to meet the basic requirements of life.”

Park Geun-hye (1952) eleventh President of South Korea

Excerpts from inaugural address (February 25, 2013)

Life, Happiness, Children, Fear

“From a young age, we pick up many false assumptions about the world, about life, and about exactly who we are living life.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

Life, World, Falseness

“Life is a play acted by dying men,
Where, if its heroes seem to foot it well
And go light-tongued without grimace of pain,
Death will be found anon. And who shall tell
Which part was saddest, or in youth or age,
When the tired actor stops and leaves the stage?”

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922) English poet and writer

'Esther, A Young Man's Tragedy" (1892), Sonnet II http://www.sonnets.org/esther.htm

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“When I have lived enough to a certain age, I will not bring a man to measure to a certain extent or to a certain standard. The most important thing right now is to find someone who understands me.”

Ngô Thanh Vân (1979) Vietnamese singer and actress

"Ngô Thanh Vân: 'Tôi không còn nghĩ đến chuyện chồng con'" in Thanh Niên (10 March 2019) https://thanhnien.vn/van-hoa/ngo-thanh-van-toi-khong-con-nghi-den-chuyen-chong-con-1058998.html

Understanding

“Even if teen-age children aren't making a sound, it's quieter when they're gone. They put a boiling in the air around them. As they left, the whole house seemed to sigh and settle. No wonder poltergeists infest only houses with adolescent children.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter V

Children, Housing

“From an early age, I tried to be funny for the adults. [...] I think I thought and feel still that I have to provide that in order for people to like me.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

People, Feeling, Thinking

“Physicians and scientists will measure brain hormones—in ventricular fluid and elsewhere—will link these to specific diseases, and will devise space-age techniques to restock the mind's hormonal pantries. The only question is, When?'”

Richard Bergland neuroscientist

The Fabric of Mind (1985)

Disease, Question

“Over the ages, if we had had a more open attitude to knowledge, to change of consciousness, to change of perception of the possibilities of life and the nature of the reality in which we live, people like Galileo or Copernicus would have had altogether easier lives.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Great Approach (2001)

Life, People, Nature, Knowledge

“We have a lot of heroes. We have Asian heroes, we have Asian American heroes, men, women, of all ages, and not all of them do martial arts. But that doesn't mean that they don't have their own arcs, their own stories, their own subtleties and nuances. And I think that's what's important.”

Simu Liu (1989) Chinese-born Canadian actor

Source: "Simu Liu, the Asian Marvel superhero emerging at a critical time" in NBC Asian America (2 June 2021) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/simu-liu-asian-marvel-superhero-emerging-critical-time-rcna1071

Women, Men, Art, Thinking

“If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

As quoted in A Gift of Days: The Greatest Words to Live By (2009), p. 81, by Stephen Alcorn

Children, Music

“We have survived multiple ice ages, we have knocked down mammoths, we are carriers, we are heirs to the greatest civilization that ever existed.”

Thierry Baudet (1983) Dutch writer and jurist

Baudet's speech: 5 remarkable statements and what they mean. https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/politiek/artikel/4650251/de-speech-van-baudet-forum-voor-democratie-5-opmerkelijke

“Education and health care are not only commercial services, but also public and universal ones. So on top of commerce, what can we do to play our role? What can we do in terms of pension and health in an ageing society?”

Ma Huateng (1971) Chinese internet entrepreneur

"Tencent founder Pony Ma emphasises company’s investment in social value amid increasing antitrust and gaming scrutiny" in South China Morning Post (23 April 2021) https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3130836/pony-ma-emphasises-tencents-investment-social-value-amid-increasing

Health, Education, Universe

“But at the end of the day it’s like, we want to walk out of here, not be dragged out here on a stretcher. I just don’t trust myself as much as I used to. And I don’t know if it’s age—I’m a little bit more nervous when I do gymnastics. I feel like I’m also not having as much fun, and I know that.”

Simone Biles (1997) American gymnast

"Simone Biles Explains Withdrawal: “I Just Don’t Trust Myself As Much As I Used To” " in Slate (27 July 2021) https://slate.com/culture/2021/07/simone-biles-olympics-gymnastics-statement.html

Feeling

“The student must be allowed to develop his thinking ability and creativity, instead of repressing them from an early age.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Thinking

“Without doubt, the mystics have accessed the cosmic consciousness and they are capable to use their intuitive abilities, unlike the majority of the people. This is the highest knowledge one can ever seek to possess in our age.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

People, Knowledge

“Anytime you start to imagine being the son or daughter of God, then now is a good time to go back to your family tree. Also check your chronological age.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, Family, Imagination, Tree

“Everything seems possible during childhood, but things start to change as we age and face the realities of the universe.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Reality, Universe, Change, Childhood

“Those who claim that life begins at forty, they can't recall history, that Alexander became and died as the greatest without reaching this peak age. They also do not know those who die in their childhood.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, History, Childhood

“Taste the betrayal of the gods, then; I have dined on it for ages.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The Hallowed Hunt

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Hallowed Hunt (2005), Chapter 23 (p. 425)

God, Betrayal

“Well, I suppose we have to have young intellectuals, if we’re ever to survive to be middle-aged philosophers.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

Source: Some Will Not Die (1961), Chapter 5 (p. 84)

“The Dark Ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Post-war years (1945–1955) Source: The Sinews of Peace https://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1946/s460305a_e.htm speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.

Science, Time

“The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, State of the Union Address — Second Bill of Rights (1944)

Fear

“At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

Lying, Effort, Sincerity

“To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Rambler, No. 78 (Sat 15 Dec 1750). http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/sda_viewer?n=106855 See also The Yale Book of Quotations, Samuel Johnson 2 (2006)

Death, Sleep, Time

“A man has four natural enemies: fear, clarity, power, and old age. Fear, clarity and power can be overcome, but not old age. Its effect can be postponed, but it can never be overcome.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from The Teachings of Don Juan (Chapter 4)

Fear, Nature

Quotes about age page 42

Quotes about age
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