Nahj al-Balagha
“There was no man more valorous and courageous than Robert E. Lee.”
Ilana Mercer South African writer
"Sanctuary City Mayor Trashes An AMERICAN Hero, Robert E. Lee https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/sanctuary-city-mayor-trashes-an-american-hero-robert-e-lee/," The Abbeville Institute, May 25, 2017 <br class="br">2010s, 2017
“But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to Charles Willson Peale (20 August 1811)
1810s
John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 208.
“A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be.”
Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author
Source: The Paths of the Dead: Book One of the Viscount of Adrilankha (2003) https://vtmolo.com/quotes-about-ambition/ (vtmolo)]
“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice
Attributed in the Sioux City Journal http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/ (6 Jul 2008), p. A8 <br class="br">In fact, from a " Valedictory Address https://books.google.com/books?id=7joCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA426&dq=The+young+man+knows+the+rules,+but+the+old+man+knows+the+exceptions&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAmoVChMI1-e4oOewyAIVWFmICh0eVQsI#v=onepage&q=%22The%20young%20man%20knows%20the%20rules%2C%20but%20the%20old%20man%20knows%20the%20exceptions%22&f=false, delivered to the Graduating Class of the Bellevue Hospital College" in 1871 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, reprinted in the New York Medical Journal 13 (April 1871): 426. <br class="br">Misattributed
“903. Better have an old Man to humour, than a young Rake to break your Heart.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist
Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 68: from his manuscript, known as 'Cahier pour Aline' (ca. 1892-1893)
“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
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate
Interview for French TV (1998)
Context: There's a detachment that you need as a writer. And as a young man, I probably had more detachment than I have today. So that part of me was just looking at the battlefield, and it was certainly full of horrors. There was a lieutenant with us and a driver and another enlisted man like myself. And I think they were shocked profoundly.
I just thought — this is a cold and cruel thing to say, but it's the way a writer is — I thought, "Oh, this is good." Not that it was good that all these people are dead. But "Oh, it's so good for writing." There was a sense of, "This can be used."
Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman
Letter to Edmund Burke (24 January 1779), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 41.
1770s
