“What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.”

— Emil M. Cioran , book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Dec. 30, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification." by Emil M. Cioran?

Emil M. Cioran 531

Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995

Related quotes

“Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Quoted in "Books: The Great Gadfly", Time magazine, 8 October 1965 (review of The Age of Voltaire by Will and Ariel Durant)

“Twenty is in hot haste to become a year older and cast its first vote, which Forty will know was cast like the legendary pearls.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 58

“What's in my pocket?
You never knew
You didn't know me well
So well, as I knew you”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

"Thieves".
Volume Two (2010)

“Here is an amazement –– once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Am I Not Among the Early Risers"
West Wind (1997)

“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

“Translated:
I’m growing old, I’m sixty years;
I’ve labored all my life in vain.
In all that time of hopes and fears,
I’ve failed my dearest wish to gain.
I see full well that here below
Bliss unalloyed there is for none
My prayer would else fulfilment know —
Never have I seen Carcassonne!”

Gustave Nadaud (1820–1893) songwriter

Je me fais vieux, j’ai soixante ans,
J’ai travaillé toute ma vie,
Sans avoir, durant tout ce temps.
Pu satisfaire mon envie.
Je vois bien qu’il n’est ici-bas
De bonheur complet pour personne.
Mon vœu ne s’accomplira pas:
Je n’ai jamais vu Carcassonne!
Stanza 1.
Carcassonne, (c. 1887; with translation by John Reuben Thompson)