No idea is so antiquitated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not some day be antiquitated . . . to seize the flying thought before it escapes us is our only touch with reality.
Ellen GlasgowRead
In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery ... that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one's entire being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True living and understanding life comes with age and experience.
Ellen Glasgow's quote reflects the idea that the true essence of living is often only realized with the maturity that comes after sixty years of life. It suggests that before reaching this age, individuals may only engage with life superficially, but as one ages, they start to engage with life on a deeper, more meaningful level, encompassing their entire being.
Themes
WisdomAgeLivingExperienceTruth
In practice
Example use cases
During a guest lecture on aging, this quote can inspire students to consider the profound insights older generations hold.
More from Ellen Glasgow
All quotes →Spring, which germinated in the earth, moved also with a strange restlessness, in the hearts of... women. As the weeks passed, inextinguishable hope, which mounts with the rising sap, looked from their faces.
Ellen GlasgowRead
The things I feared were not in the sky, but in the nature and in the touch of humanity. The cruelty of children . . . the blindness of the unpitiful - these were my terrors. But not the crash of thunder overhead, not the bolts of fire from the clouds.
Ellen GlasgowRead
He felt with the force of a revelation that to throw up the clods of earth manfully is as beneficent as to revolutionize the world. It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into it, that counted - and the man who was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.
Ellen GlasgowRead
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
Ellen GlasgowRead
Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.
Ellen GlasgowRead
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