Aged Quotes

Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them. ~ Angela Carter

Dad's voice falters as he says goodbye. He is choking down his own grief to protect Mum, I know. He loves her deeply. I accept that he is incapable of expressing all this, and I am incapable of even saying the right thing, should he ever do so. And lurking deeper, is the knowledge that he has been here, himself. When I was aged about 5, his father - my grandfather - had cancer and took his own life by walking into the sea. My dad found his body under a jetty. What would it have been like to experience that tragedy? And then, to try and live, to go on raising a family, with those images haunting you? ~ Linda Collins

Well, Jack, we have taken the Macedonian, and your share of the prize, if we get her in safely, may be two hundred dollars; what will you do with it?" Stephen Decatur, commanding the frigate United States, North Atlantic, near the Azores Islands, 1812.

"One hundred will go to my mother, sir, and the other I shall spend on schooling." Jack Creamer, aged ten. ~ Irvin Anthony

In youth, the greatest success is to see the world from the eyes of the aged people and to feel exactly how they feel. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

So ... I feel in regard to this aged England ... pressed upon by transitions of trade and ... competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The digital revolution has wrest a little control away from corporate publishers and white, male, middle-aged critics, but the financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession. ~ Sara Sheridan

You make your own kinds of mistakes, and I'm sure you'll have your share of regrets in life. But commitment was never your problem, sweetie. You have a better chance of making this work than most forty-year-olds I know. My little middle-aged child. Luckily, you seem to have found another old soul. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Fate isn't some middle-aged man with a squint who won't recognize you if you change your clothes. ~ Meg Rosoff

An endless scream pierced the frigid night air and shook the world with its rage and sorrow. The aged stone and brick that had withstood the great quake over a hundred years ago now trembled before its pain, and even the austere grimace of the lonely grotesque, its only witness, softened in pity. ~ Ava Zavora

In his twenties, John Bridgens most identified with Hamlet. The strangely aging Prince of Denmark - Bridgens was quite sure that the boy Hamlet had magically aged over a few theatrical weeks to a man who was, at the very least, in his thirties by Act V - had been suspended between thought and deed, between motive and action, frozen by a consciousness so astute and unrelenting that it made him think about everything, even thought itself. ~ Dan Simmons

FOR A VERY LONG MOMENT WE ALL STOOD IN A FROZEN tableau of hostile indecision. Debs and Recht stared at each other, Deke breathed through his mouth, and I tried to decide whether assisting the fallen woman was technically within my jurisdiction as a blood-spatter analyst. And then there was a clatter at the front door and I heard a minor commotion behind me. "Shit," a male voice called out, quite clearly. "Shit, shit, shit." It was impossible to argue with the general sentiment, but nevertheless I turned around to see if I could gather some specifics. A middle-aged man hurried toward us. He was tall and soft-looking and had close-cropped gray hair and a matching beard. He slid to one knee beside Mrs. Aldovar and picked up her hand. "Hey, Emily? Honey?" he said as he patted her hand. "Come on, Em." I ~ Jeff Lindsay

See that guy over there?" I nod toward a man in jean shorts and a Budweiser T-shirt. "Am I that obvious?"
St. Clair squints at him. "Obviously what? Balding? Overweight? Tasteless?"
"American."
He sighs melodramtically. "Honestly, Anna. You must get over this."
"I just don't want to offend anyone. I hear they offend easily."
"You're not offending anyone except me right now."
"What about her?" I point to a middle-aged woman in khaki shorts and a knit top with stars and stripes on it.She has a camera strapped to her belt and is arguing with a man in a bucket hat. Her husband,I suppose.
"Completely offensive."
"I mean,am I as obvious as her?"
"Considering she's wearing the American flag, I'd venture a no on that one." He bites his thumbnail. "Listen.I think I have a solution to your problem, but you'll have to wait for it. Just promise you'll stop asking me to compare you to fifty-year-old women,and I'll take care of everything."
"How? With what? A French passport?"
He snorts. "I didn't say I'd make you French." I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off. "Deal?"
"Deal," I say uncomfortably. I don't care for surprises. "But it better be good."
"Oh,it's good." And St. Clair looks so smug that I'm about to call him on it, when I realize I can't see our school anymore.
I don't believe it.He's completely distracted me. ~ Stephanie Perkins

We walked into my mother's house at 10:30 in the morning at the end of February 1992. I had been gone for three weeks. She had been so desperate about us - she, too, looked thin and haggard. She was stunned to see me walk in, filthy and crawling with lice, with a huge crowd of starving people.
We ate and drank clean water; then, before we even washed, I put Marian in a taxi with me and told the driver to go to Nairobi Hospital. We had no money left and I knew Nairobi Hospital was expensive; it was where I had been operated on when the ma'alim broke my skull. But I also knew that there they would help us first and ask to pay later. Saving the baby's life had become the only thing that mattered to me.
At the reception desk I announced, "This baby is going to die," and the nurse's eyes went wide with horror. She took him and put a drip in his arm, and very slowly, this tiny shape seemed to uncrumple slightly. After a little while, his eyes opened.
The nurse said, "The child will live," and told us to deal with the bill at the cash desk. I asked her who her director was, and found him, and told this middle-aged Indian doctor the whole story. I said I couldn't pay the bill. He took it and tore it up. He said it didn't matter. Then he told me how to look after the baby, and where to get rehydration salts, and we took a taxi home.
Ma paid for the taxi and looked at me, her eyes round with respect. "Well done," she said. It was a rare compliment.
In the next ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It was surprisingly crowded, a bunch of middle-aged people, mostly women, moving enthusiastically, if a bit awkwardly, to Prince's "Little Red Corvette," trying to find a way back to their younger, more limber selves. ~ Tom Perrotta

One aged man - one man - can't fill a house. ~ Robert Frost

90/93-year-old Jacob wonders as he gazes at his aged reflection, 'When did I stop being me? ~ Sara Gruen

Darona's face bore the pinched, taut look and shadowed eyes of someone constantly in pain, but the lack of lines suggested she was younger than Jesral had first thought; middle-aged, fifty at the very most.
'You make an uncommonly fine looking noblewoman, for a Mhrydaineg commoner.'
'Thank you.' Jesral was careful to keep all tone out of her voice. Darona gave her a shrewd stare, then a slight smile.
'Self-control. Good. You must ignore me when I offend you unintentionally. They say that pain can make one waspish, but my brothers and son tell me there's been no change in my manner. I was acid-tongued long before this set in,' she held up a knotted hand, 'and taking devil's claw root has no effect on that. Rest assured, young woman, when I intend offence people are in no doubt about it. ~ Helen Bell

Ask any Ferrari, Porsche or Ray-Ban salesperson about their average customer and you will very likely hear that he is not, as the adverts would have us believe, a virile young footballer with shiny hair, a rippling six pack and a trouser pouch like a new punch bag. He is, in fact, a middle-aged bloke wearing more chins than he started life with and carrying the clear evidence of forty years of beer and pies slung across his midriff. ~ Richard Hammond

I am not and will never again be a young writer, a young homeowner, a young teacher. I was never a young wife. The only thing I could do now for which my youth would be a truly notable feature would be to die. If I died now, I'd die young. Everything else, I'm doing middle-aged. ~ Meghan Daum

[Sex] is only a mirage, floating in shimmering mockery before the bulging eyes of middle-aged men as they stumble with little whimpers toward the double bed, that somewhere there is a person that will evoke from them sensations of which they dimly dream they are capable. ~ Quentin Crisp

One of the most helpful things I introduced (and of very considerable consequence to Canadians) was my ultimate success in persuading my colleagues (after continuing battle)to reduce the qualifying age for aged pensioners from seventy to sixty-five over a five year period. ~ Judy LaMarsh

I can remember hearing one middle-aged man who sat nearby saying 'Simmer down, boyo' to another older man seated kitty-corner to me across the doorway to one of the hallways extending out from the waiting area, except when I looked up from the book both these men were staring straight ahead, expressionless, with no sign of anyone needing to 'simmer down' in any conceivable way. ~ David Foster Wallace

In Russia, the person who put Sevastopol on the literary map was Leo Tolstoy, a veteran of the siege. His fictionalized memoir The Sebastopol Sketches made him a national celebrity. Already with the first installment of the work published, Tsar Alexander II saw the propaganda value of the piece and ordered it translated into French for dissemination abroad. That made the young author very happy. Compared with Tolstoy's later novels, The Sebastopol Sketches hasn't aged well, possibly because this is not a heartfelt book. As the twenty-six-year-old Tolstoy's Sevastopol diaries reveal, not heartache but ambition drove him at the time. Making a name as an author was just an alternative to two other grand plans - founding a new religion and creating a mathematical model for winning in cards (his losses during the siege were massive even for a rich person). ~ Constantine Pleshakov

I have often perplexed myself over what I saw in Nelle Snyder's aged face at that moment. It was no look of paranoia. It was a look of waiting. Perpetual waiting. That look was to come back to me sixteen years later when I heard Rose's narration at the end of James Cameron's Titanic, with its line about survivors "waiting for an absolution that never came." Yet the waiting I saw in Nelle Snyder's face seemed larger even than a waiting for absolution. It seemed vaster even than Titanic herself. Call it the waiting of the Mother of all Perished Vessels. Or of a Ship of Honeymoon Dreams perchance, with a passenger list spanning all humanity, that once proudly sailed but was lost, aeons ago, and sank to a dark, unreachable abode where nothing whatsoever can be grasped about her except her perplexing power still to haunt us. ~ James Glaeg

The calendar and his glass and the solicitude of his juniors may tell a man that he is old, and he can see for himself that the world and all around him have aged, but secretly he knows that he is still a youth of eighteen or twenty. And what I have said of a man, I have said because a man is what I am. It must be even more true of a woman, to whom youth and beauty and vitality are so much more to be treasured and conserved. ~ Gary Jennings

What's clarity like? Try to remember that funny feeling inside your head when you had math problems too difficult to solve: the faint buzzing noise in your ears, a heaviness on both sides of your skull, and the sensation that your brain is twitching inside your cranium like a fish on the beach. This is the opposite sensation of clarity. Yet for many people of my era, as they aged, this sensation became the dominant sensation of their lives. It was as though day-to-day twentieth century living had become an unsolvable algebraic equation. ~ Douglas Coupland

Its basic axiom is to be followed by individuals as well as great nations, by Losers and Winners alike. We have demonstrated the workability of the axiom in Vietnam, in Bangladesh, in Biafra, in Palestinian refugee camps, in our own ghettos, in our migrant labor camps, on our Indian reservations, in our institutions for the defective and the deformed and the aged. This is it: Ignore agony. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Following his studies with Carrel, Voronoff worked in Egypt for the Egyptian king. Voronoff soon became fascinated with the eunuchs that were part of the king's harem. In particular, he noted that the castration they received seemed to increase the speed at which the eunuchs aged. This observation was the beginning of Voronoff's obsession with a surgical answer to aging. Likely inspired by the pioneering work of his mentor and the excitement of the new surgical techniques, Voronoff began to dabble in experimental transplantation. But he went beyond the techniques that his mentor had perfected. In early experiments Voronoff transplanted the testicles of a lamb into an old ram, claiming that the transplant served to thicken the ram's wool and increase its sex drive. These early studies foreshadowed the work that would follow. ~ Nathan Wolfe

I thought I was looking at a building at first: that it was some kind of tent, as high as a country church, made of grey and pink canvas that flapped in the gusts of storm wind, in that orange sky: a lopsided canvas structure aged by weather and ripped by time. And then it turned and I saw its face ... ~ Neil Gaiman

The median-aged CNN viewer is 60. For Fox, it's 68. ~ Anonymous

When I was little, she thought, I wanted nothing except to stop travelling. I wanted time for each new thing, each new feeling, to be held properly in suspension until it could be joined by the next. Given the chance I could easily hold all those beautiful things together. I could be like a box in which they would be held new forever. Instead, everything aged and changed. People too. ~ M. John Harrison

When my father met her, he was surprised to learn she lived by herself. He was a urologist, which meant he saw many elderly patients, and it always bothered him to find them living alone. The way he saw it, if they didn't already have serious needs, they were bound to develop them, and coming from India he felt it was the family's responsibility to take the aged in, give them company, and look after them. ~ Atul Gawande

I will compensate all your one-inch, two-inch losses because I know how important every inch is to you aged, decrepit men. ~ Kim Harrison

Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes, that was better in any case, life declined. ~ Julian Barnes

In Paris, women were not considered interesting until they were middle-aged. The Mist of Montmartre ~ Peggy Kopman-Owens

I made my first fire last night and I didn't even set myself aflame! It was fantastic". "If you need more, there's plenty where that came from". "Sure, I'll take your wood anytime!" Matty fought the smile that threatened to engulf his face, and he coughed, using it for a cover of his laugh. But Rob laughed outright. "Consider me at your service. Though, technically, It wasn't my wood. So maybe it's more accurate to say that you'll take George's wood anytime. Matty cracked up. "No, definitely not. I'm sure it's aged and gnarled". ~ Leta Blake

I see you are in a dilemma, and one of a peculiar and difficult nature. Two paths lie before you; you conscientiously wish to choose the right one, even though it be the most steep, straight, and rugged; but you do not know which is the right one; you cannot decide whether duty and religion command you to go out into the cold and friendless world, and there to earn your living by governess drudgery, or whether they enjoin your continued stay with your aged mother, neglecting, for the present, every prospect of independency for yourself, and putting up with the daily inconvenience, sometimes even with privations. I can well imagine, that it is next to impossible for you to decide for yourself in this matter, so I will decide it for you.

At least, I will tell you what is my earnest conviction on the subject; I will show you candidly how the question strikes me. The right path is that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest -- which implies the greatest good to others; and this path, steadily followed, will lead, I believe, in time, to prosperity and to happiness; though it may seem, at the outset, to tend quite in a contrary direction. Your mother is both old and infirm; old and infirm people have but few resources of happiness -- fewer almost than the comparatively young and healthy can conceive; to deprive them of one of these is cruel. If your mother is more composed when you are with her, stay with her. If she would be unhappy in case you left ~ Charlotte Bronte

May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses. May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free. May the powerless find power, and may people think of befriending each other. May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wilderness- the children, the aged, the unprotected- be guarded by beneficent celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood. ~ Gautama Buddha

Look at us. A line of symmetry. Two halves of a whole. Two peas in a pod. A pair of queens. Though your card, I must observe, has aged better than mine, which has been played too often. ~ Erika Robuck

The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
She limps along in an aged whiteness ... ~ William Butler Yeats

Henry's Understanding
He was reading late, at Richard's, down in Maine,
aged 32? Richard & Helen long in bed,
my good wife long in bed.
All I had to do was strip & get into my bed,
putting the marker in the book, & sleep,
& wake to a hot breakfast.
Off the coast was an island, P'tit Manaan,
the bluff from Richard's lawn was almost sheer.
A chill at four o'clock.
It only takes a few minutes to make a man.
A concentration upon now & here.
Suddenly, unlike Bach,
& horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me
that one night, instead of warm pajamas,
I'd take off all my clothes
& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff
into the terrible water & walk forever
under it out toward the island. ~ John Berryman

What I find is that it's the middle-aged authors who have lived a life who have the most important, interesting voices. They just need someone to give them the key to unlock the door. ~ Fiona McIntosh

And it's a life with no shortage of moments to recommend it, a life that picks up speed like a boulder rolling down a hill, easy and natural and comfortable, and yet beyond control somehow; it all happens so fast, you wake a young man and at lunch are middle-aged and by dinner you can imagine your death. ~ Jess Walter

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention. ~ Aldous Huxley

For youth, sexual love is whim; for the aged, luxury. ~ Bill Gaede

Besides," she says, eyes twinkling mischievously, "it'd never work out between us. I'm still holding a candle for Professor Haven."
"How could I compete with a middle-aged English professor?"
"Well," she says, "you could do, but it'd be useless. Something about his receding hairline just drives me mad. ~ Seventhswan

I loved pretending to be a middle-aged Jewish woman. I just wanted to do what I saw Gilda Radner and Carol Burnett doing. But I'm not a particularly good impressionist. It was never my strong suit. ~ Jenny Slate

How can I tolerate the slightest inconvenience to them, the women, the children, the sick, the aged, the blind, the decrepit, that come for counsel, consolation, courage and cure?. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

I'm saying that storms happen - cancer happens. Accidents happen. We can either run from them, hide from them, or....go through them. God is with us in all of those situations. But yeah, some of his best people are pressed out, shaken, fermented...aged through circumstances or time. ~ Susan May Warren

It was incredible to see how ordinary individuals act once they cross the porthole from the streets into Tiffany & Co. They instantly transform from giggling, loud-mouthed college girls, griping old biddies and tired middle-aged errand shoppers into genteel cousins to aristocracy. ~ Chiara Kelly

Our dia continued. 'When I was twenty-one years old, my niang told me that I was to marry a nice girl aged eighteen. I told her, "I don't want to marry anyone, I don't know how to be a husband." She replied, "All you have to do is love her. She will teach you the rest about life." Little did I know then, but by fate I had married a rare jewel, the most precious jewel I could ever wish for. I treasured and loved her from the time I lifted her veil. I still love her today and will love her for the remainder of my humble life. ~ Li Cunxin

Ah yes, the facts. I've spent my whole life running after them, convinced that if I found demonstrable, incontrovertible facts I would also find some kind of truth. Now aged sixty-three, faced with this war which has only just begun and with an unsettling premonition of what is soon to follow, I'm beginning to think the facts are just a front and that the truth they mask is at best like a Russian doll: as soon as you open it up you find a smaller one inside, then another which is even smaller, then another and another, till finally all you are left with is something the size of a grain.
Letters against the war: Letter from Quetta, 2011. ~ Tiziano Terzani

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing. ~ Wladimir Klitschko

It's a fact: black people in this country die more easily, at all ages, across genders. Look at how young black men die, and how middle-aged black men drop dead, and how black women are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. The numbers graft to poverty but they also graph to stresses known and invisible. How did we come here, after all? Not with upturned chins and bright eyes but rather in chains, across a chasm. But what did we do? We built a nation, and we built its art. ~ Elizabeth Alexander

Winston was a bit of a challenge, all right, from a lot of different perspectives. It wasn't just the culture or the class divide or the historical baggage - it was also the age difference. We had to see if I could be aged-up legitimately, without it becoming some sort of hokey acting challenge. ~ Brendan Gleeson

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltiness of those dead sea apples. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Life sure went by quick when you weren't paying attention. It took forever to go from a child to a grown-up. The middle-aged years went by at a steady clip, and everything else after that just sort of whizzed by. ~ Karen McQuestion

You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation. ~ Aldrich Ames

They're making a movie about Barack and Michelle Obama's first date, called 'Southside With You,' and the producers say they've already cast someone to play young Barack Obama. Now, I'm not saying the president has aged a lot but that young actor is Morgan Freeman. ~ Jimmy Fallon

When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good. ~ Thomas Paine

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops ... when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living ...
~ T.H. White

I feel like I have so many middle-aged women who look up to me. ~ Dana Torres

Do you mind?' He inquired politely as he lowered himself into the chair.

'Do I mind what?' She examined his ears as if they were curious phenomena. 'Rabies, dogs, aged relatives or standing around in the rain?'

'Do you mind me sitting here?'

'I can please myself whether or not I endure it. That's freedom, isn't it? ~ Eric Frank Russell

I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should have been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won't let you grow. ~ Robin Roe

The organs of the aged do not cry out in pain. ~ Richard Colgan

Ren's scent was everywhere. The smoke of aged wood lingering beneath a chilled autumn sky, the smooth burn of well-worn leather, the seductive ribbon of sandalwood. I closed my eyes, letting his scent pour over me, filling me with memories. ~ Andrea Cremer

I wanted to be an actor ever since I got on stage for the first time, aged 13. Before that, I thought I might follow in the medical footsteps of my parents: my father was a doctor, my mother a pharmacist. ~ Chiwetel Ejiofor

Knowledgeable observers report that dating has nearly disappeared from college campuses and among young adults generally. It has been replaced by something called "hanging out." You young people apparently know what this is, but I will describe it for the benefit of those of us who are middle-aged or older and otherwise uninformed. Hanging out consists of numbers of young men and young women joining together in some group activity. It is very different from dating.
For the benefit of some of you who are not middle-aged or older, I also may need to describe what dating is. Unlike hanging out, dating is not a team sport. Dating is pairing off to experience the kind of one-on-one association and temporary commitment that can lead to marriage in some rare and treasured cases. . . .

All of this made dating more difficult. And the more elaborate and expensive the date, the fewer the dates. As dates become fewer and more elaborate, this seems to create an expectation that a date implies seriousness or continuing commitment. That expectation discourages dating even more. . . .

Simple and more frequent dates allow both men and women to "shop around" in a way that allows extensive evaluation of the prospects. The old-fashioned date was a wonderful way to get acquainted with a member of the opposite sex. It encouraged conversation. It allowed you to see how you treat others and how you are treated in a one-on-one situation. It gave opportunities to learn how t ~ Dallin H. Oaks

Write what you know," my ass. Now, I'm not suggesting that you write about my ass. But although you do not, in fact, know my ass, I give you permission to write about it. And if you think you need my permission to write about my ass ("What right do I have, as a male, twenty-something, single, childfree, immigrant Indonesian Buddhist, to pretend to understand the ass of an Anglo American middle-aged married female Freethinker?") or about anything, then you lack the courage, curiosity and imagination to write good fiction, so please find something else to do. ~ Robyn Parnell

Being in the audience of the State of the Union is not a passive experience. Every few minutes when the president completed a thought, everyone stood up to clap. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. The sound of the springs in the aged chairs of the House Chamber became a secondary soundtrack. I was distracted by my discomfort and began to dread the end of his sentences. But then I noticed that not every person stood up every single time. I realized they only stood up when he said something their side agreed with. I decided that no matter what he said next, I was going to stay seated. I was really hurting. I was going to sit one round out. Well, as soon as I'd made my mind up that I was staying put, President Obama made a statement and everyone stood up. Everyone. Not half of the room. Every person in the room except me. It happened far too fast for me to correct my mistake. What did he say? "We need equal pay for women." And I just sat there like a jerk. If the president himself had looked up and to the left, he'd have seen me just sitting there, seemingly opposed to equal pay for women! Good grief! I was not seated next to the first lady, thankfully. I made sure to stand up the rest of the time. ~ Noah Galloway

Every woman dreams of love. When she is young she prays she will find it. When she is middle aged she hopes for it and when she is old she remembers it. ~ Barbara Cartland

He smiles shyly at Leah. Aged ten he had a smile! Nathan Bogle: the very definition of desire for girls who had previously only felt that way about certain fragrant erasers. A smile to destroy the resolve of even the strictest teachers, other people's parents. Now she sees ten-year-olds and cannot believe they have inside them what she had inside her at the same age. ~ Zadie Smith

Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a century old. ~ Charles Dickens

My biggest kick comes from the individual fans I run into. Middle-aged men ask me when we're going to do more Johnny Quest cartoons. ~ Joseph Barbera

Its avowed purpose is to excite sexual desire, which, I should have thought, is unnecessary in the case of the young, inconvenient in the case of the middle aged, and unseemly in the old. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

Logic , like lyrical poetry , is no employment for the middle-aged ~ John Maynard Keynes

Mark ran his fingers over the bindings and
whispered words, written long ago, words that
wriggled through the aged leather, trembled
beneath his touch. What lives and loves,
hopes and dreams, deaths and despair
these volumes held. ~ Ellen Read

Singaporeans seemed generally quite loathe to discuss these more intimate policies of government with a curious foreign visitor who was more than twice as tall as the average human, and who sweated slowly but continuously, like and aged cheese. ~ William Gibson

Dekker kicked out, connecting with my left shin, and I dropped him for a second. That was all the time he needed to grab a weapon. Without thinking I pulled out a similar item for the box. And that was how we ended up fighting a duel with plastic lightsabers. We must have looked strange - two middle aged men slashing away at each other with toy swords complete with sound effects. ~ Leslie Langtry

The youngest, aged twelve, could not conceal her disappointment, and turned away, feeling as so many of us have felt when we discover that our idols are very extraordinary men and women. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Aside from her aged maid, Sansa's only companion was the Lord Robert, eight going on three. ~ George R R Martin

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem. ~ Rita Dove

Herbenick invited me to sit in on the Human Sexuality class she was about to teach, one of the most popular courses on Indiana's campus. She was, on that day, delivering a lecture on gender disparities in sexual satisfaction. More than one hundred fifty students were already seated in the classroom when we arrived, nearly all of them female, most dressed in sweats, their hair pulled into haphazard ponytails. They listened raptly as Herbenick explained the vastly different language young men and young women use when describing "good sex." "Men are more likely to talk about pleasure, about orgasm," Herbenick said. "Women talk more about absence of pain. Thirty percent of female college students say they experience pain during their sexual encounters as opposed to five percent of men."

The rates of pain among women, she added, shoot up to 70 percent when anal sex is included. Until recently, anal sex was a relatively rare practice among young adults. But as it's become disproportionately common in porn - and the big payoff in R-rated fare such as Kingsman and The To Do List - it's also on the rise in real life. In 1992 only 16 percent of women aged eighteen to twenty-four said they had tried anal sex. Today 20 percent of women eighteen to nineteen have, and by ages twenty to twenty-four it's up to 40 percent. A 2014 study of heterosexuals sixteen to eighteen years old - and can we pause for a moment to consider just how young that is? - found that it was mainly boys ~ Peggy Orenstein

Phoebe Hurty hired me to write copy for ads about teen aged clothes. I had to wear the clothes I praised. That was part of the job. And I became friends with her two sons, who were my age. I was over at their house all the time.

She would talk bawdily to me and her sons, and our girlfriends when we brought them around. She was funny. She was liberating. She taught us to be impolite in conversation not only about sexual matters, but about American history and famous heroes, about the distribution of wealth, about school, about everything.

I now make my living being impolite. I am clumsy at it. I keep trying to imitate the impoliteness which was so graceful in Phoebe Hurty. I think now that grace was easier for her than it is for me because of the mood of the Great Depression. She believed what so many Americans believed then: that the nation would be happy and just and rational when prosperity came.

I never hear that word anymore: Prosperity. It used to be a synonym for Paradise. And Phoebe Hurty was able to believe that the impoliteness she recommended would give shape to an American paradise.

Now her sort of impoliteness is in fashion. But nobody believes anymore in a new American paradise. I sure miss Phoebe Hurty. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'm officially middle-aged. I don't need drugs anymore, thank God. I can get the same effect just by standing up real fast. ~ Jonathan Katz

The problem in this case was you can't be a middle-aged virgin in America without something being wrong with you. People can't conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can't conceive in themselves. Instead of believing you're stronger, it's so much easier to imagine you're weaker. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

She was in love, as she quite saw, with a middle - aged man who said the same thing to all the girls, who had been a prince for an evening which he'd most likely forgotten already, who had given her a ring with a redcurrant in it and who cared, to the exclusion of all else, for his work. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald

Everything is old, here. We are old - the Masters."
"You're not," Irian said. She thought him between thirty and forty[ ... ]
"But I came far. Miles can be years. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Then Treece realized a remarkable thing. He understood in a flash that everyone in the world was the same age -no one younger or older than anyone else. He could not understand it, but he knew it to be true. Was there something in the air of the world that made people appear to be old or middle-aged or young? ~ P.K. Page

It was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them from our garden. 'I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber were dead, and I hate trees,' said Lisa. ~ James Thurber

Deep inside, Ella blamed herself. She hadn't aged well ~ Elif Shafak

When he was creating this picture, Leonardo da Vinci encountered a serious problem: he had to depict Good - in the person of Jesus - and Evil - in the figure of Judas, the friend who resolves to betray him during the meal. He stopped work on the painting until he could find his ideal models.

One day, when he was listening to a choir, he saw in one of the boys the perfect image of Christ. He invited him to his studio and made sketches and studies of his face.

Three years went by. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo had still not found the perfect model for Judas. The cardinal responsible for the church started to put pressure on him to finish the mural.

After many days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged youth, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the fellow directly to the church, since there was no time left to make preliminary sketches.

The beggar was taken there, not quite understanding what was going on. He was propped up by Leonardo's assistants, while Leonardo copied the lines of impiety, sin and egotism so clearly etched on his features.

When he had finished, the beggar, who had sobered up slightly, opened his eyes and saw the picture before him. With a mixture of horror and sadness he said:

'I've seen that picture before!'


'When?' asked an astonished Leonardo.

'Three year ~ Paulo Coelho

We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Ten-year-old boys move differently than middle-aged women, who move differently than athletic guys, who move differently than government bureaucrats. ~ Brad Bird

Beautiful and rich is an old friendship, Grateful to the touch as ancient ivory, Smooth as aged wine, or sheen of tapestry Where light has lingered, intimate and long. Full of tears and warm is an old friendship That asks no longer deeds of gallantry, Or any deed at all- save that the friend shall be Alive and breathing somewhere, like a song. ~ Eunice Tietjens

Young believes everything, middle-aged suspects everything , old knows everything ~ Adnan Qasem

The customer was middle-aged, handsomely dressed, and drunk. He wanted to talk and he couldn't have stopped even if he hadn't really wanted to talk. He was polite and friendly and when I heard him he didn't seem to slur his words much, but you knew that he got up on the bottle and only let go of it when he fell asleep at night. He would be like that for the rest of his life and that was what his life was. You would never know how he got that way because even if he told you it would not be the truth. At the very best a distorted memory of the truth as he knew it. There is a sad man like that in every quiet bar in the world. I ~ Raymond Chandler

I want to learn something from my atheistic brothers and sisters, even though I'm a Christian. I want to learn something from my right-wing brothers and sisters, even though I'm a progressive. I want to learn something from the elderly, even though I'm middle-aged or tilting toward the elderly. I want to learn especially something from the youth. That's why I spend a lot of time in hip-hop studios. ~ Cornel West

And motioned me toward a spot next to a middle-aged Moroi in a very formal and very designer black suit. The suit screamed, I'm sorry the queen is dead, and I'm going to look fashionable while showing my grief ~ Richelle Mead