“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.”
Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 142
Context: “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Well.” She started pouring tea. “To start things off, what do you think of the world?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.”
“You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years.”
“It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”
They both laughed quietly.
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Ray Bradbury 401
American writer 1920–2012Related quotes
“It's because you're like that that you're still a virgin, you know.”
"Everywhere"
2000s, The Spirit Room (2001)
Context: Turn it inside out, so I can see. The part of you, that's drifting over me. Because when I wake you're, you're never there. But, when I sleep? You're? You're everywhere, you're everywhere. Just tell me how I got this far? Just tell me why you're here, and who you are. Because every time I look, you're never there. And every time I sleep, you're always there. Because you're everywhere to me, and when I close my eyes? It's you I see, you're everything I know. That makes me believe, I'm not alone. I'm not alone.
Source: Postcards from the Edge
When you remember everything you not only remember what you did right, you also remember your mistakes great and small. Also others seldom like to be made aware of their own mistakes that you may remember as well. They tend to get upset when reminded of them.
“You're an idiot, babe. It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.”
Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Idiot Wind