Quotes on Age

I was wrong to grow older. Pity. I was so happy as a child.

He that compares what he has done with what he has left undone, will feel the effect which must always follow the comparison of imagination with reality; he will look with contempt on his own unimportance, and wonder to what purpose he came into the world; he will repine that he shall leave behind him no evidence of his having been, that he has added nothing to the system of life, but has glided from youth to age among the crowd, without any effort for distinction.

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.

Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority, that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth.

The foolishness of old age does not characterize all who are old, but only the foolish.

Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.

I know not any season of life that is past more agreeably than virtuous old age.

Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.

Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful, and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws of nature could have foreseen it from the beginning of the ages. If a being with such a mind existed, we could play no game of chance with him; we should always lose.

Part of the reason I sort of shot out like a cannon out of Michigan and left home at such an early age is because I had to feel independent.

Old age is not a total misery. Experience helps.

As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new - and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one a friend.

Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.

A man who correctly guesses a woman`s age may be smart, but he's not very bright.

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendence of domestic trifles.

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.

To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to theory.

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination.

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.