“People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do — after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.”

—  William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

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 "People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows …" by William Faulkner?
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner 214
American writer 1897–1962

Related quotes

Gustav Holst photo

“One of the advantages of being over forty is that one begins to learn the difference between knowing and realising.”

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) English composer

Letter to W G Whittaker, 1914, quoted in Paul Holmes Holst p. 62.

Osamu Dazai photo

“This year I am twenty-seven. My hair has become much greyer. Most people would take me for over forty.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Final Setence
No Longer Human

Neil Gaiman photo

“She does not know where any tale waits before it's told. (No more do I.) But forty thieves sounds good, so forty thieves it is. She prays she has bought another clutch of days. We save our lives in such unlikely ways.”

Neil Gaiman book Fragile Things

From Inventing Aladdin
Fragile Things (2006)

George Herbert photo

“345. He that is not handsome at twenty, nor strong at thirty, nor rich at forty, nor wise at fifty, will never bee handsome, strong, rich, or wise.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

William Osler photo

“Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature—subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today … The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

Vol. I, Ch. 24 : "The Fixed Period'".
The Life of Sir William Osler (1925)

Ian Fleming photo

“Before a man's forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story. Of the two, it's the story that hurts most. Anyway I'm not forty yet.”

Ian Fleming book Diamonds Are Forever

Source: Diamonds Are Forever

Jayne Mansfield photo

“A forty-one inch bust and a lot of perseverance will get you more than a cup of coffee — a lot more. But most girls don't know what to do with what they've got.”

Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) American actress, singer, model

Here They Are Jayne Mansfield (1992)

Michael Crichton photo

“Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

George William Curtis photo

“Ah, Mr. Douglas! Mr. Douglas! if the little child just born to you were stolen from your arms and sold into slavery, and you went through fire and water to rescue her, would you say so airily, so jauntily, with such pleasant humor, that if you went to steal her you trust you would be caught and put in jail with other thieves? And yet not more do you love that child hanging at this moment upon her mother's bosom, than an old slave mother whom I know in the hospital across the river loved the child who forty years ago was torn from her breast and sold, and of whose fate for forty years that silent, sorrowing Rachel has not heard?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
Context: Mister Douglas in his speech at Memphis expressly says, 'Whenever a territory has a climate, soil, and productions making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will pass a slave-code and give it encouragement'. He adds that they have a right to do it, and in his late speech at Columbus he declares that there must be no interference with any action of any state, insisting, according to the report, amid great laughter at the exquisite humor of the witticism, 'If you go over to Virginia to steal her Negroes, I trust she will catch you and put you in jail with other thieves'. Ah, Mr. Douglas! Mr. Douglas! if the little child just born to you were stolen from your arms and sold into slavery, and you went through fire and water to rescue her, would you say so airily, so jauntily, with such pleasant humor, that if you went to steal her you trust you would be caught and put in jail with other thieves? And yet not more do you love that child hanging at this moment upon her mother's bosom, than an old slave mother whom I know in the hospital across the river loved the child who forty years ago was torn from her breast and sold, and of whose fate for forty years that silent, sorrowing Rachel has not heard?

Related topics