“The old man … said … the notion that men can be understood was probably an illusion.”

—  Cormac McCarthy , book All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The old man … said … the notion that men can be understood was probably an illusion." by Cormac McCarthy?
Cormac McCarthy photo
Cormac McCarthy 270
American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter 1933

Related quotes

Plutarch photo

“Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Cæsar Augustus
Roman Apophthegms

“Bowls is a young man's game which old men can play.”

David Bryant (bowls) (1931) bowls champion

Quoted in Colin Jarman's The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990)

“The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 74

“An idyllic childhood is probably illusion.”

Martha Grimes (1931) American crime writer and literature professor

Source: The Lamorna Wink

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“I find men victims of illusions in all parts oflife. Children, youths, adults and old men, all are led by one bauble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo.”

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

Source: In his essay Illusions, quoted in Gokhale, Balkrishna Govind India in the American mind Bombay: PopularPrakashan, 1992.

David Bohm photo

“The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion.”

David Bohm book Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
Context: The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Arthur Miller photo

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

"The Year it Came Apart" http://books.google.com/books?id=MekCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30, New York magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1 (30 December 1974 – 6 January 1975), p. 30

Augustus photo

“Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.”

Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Related topics