“Who likes wrinkles?
No one, however remember the laughter, happiness and joy
that created those beautiful marks.
Tell me…would you rather have smooth skin like a cold stone or to see ripples in it from years of happily sitting in a river of running water with the hot sun beating down upon it?”

— Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Last update May 15, 2022. History

Related quotes

“Like prisoners escaped during night from their prison,
The waters fling gaily their spray to the sun;
Who can tell me from whence that glad river has risen?
Who can say whence it springs in its beauty?—not one.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Minstrel’s Monitor from Literary Souvenir, 1827
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

“Me like hot weather, veree hot. I no run fast cold weather. No get warm in cold. No get warm, no play gut. You see.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted and paraphrased in "The Scoreboard" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=bkEqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=000EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4731,2918286 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Friday, June 10, 1955), p. 30
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1955</big>
Context: "I no play so gut yet," the Puerto Rican star tried to explain yesterday. "Me like hot weather, veree hot. I no run fast cold weather. No get warm in cold. No get warm, no play gut. You see." Clemente likes Forbes Field and Connie Mack Stadium the best of all the parks he's played in but has a strong dislike for Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds because of the crazy bounces the balls take as they ricochet off the walls.

“It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)
Context: Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.