Methuselah Quotes

IT IS STARTLING to think that all Europe once looked like this Puszcza. To enter it is to realize that most of us were bred to a pale copy of what nature intended. Seeing elders with trunks seven feet wide, or walking through stands of the tallest trees here - gigantic Norway spruce, shaggy as Methuselah - should seem as exotic as the Amazon or Antarctica to someone raised among the comparatively puny, second-growth woodlands found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, what's astonishing is how primally familiar it feels. And, on some cellular level, how complete. ~ Alan Weisman

A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,' said Mr. Filer, 'and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those; and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry; and he can no more hope to persuade 'em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade 'em that they have no earthly right or business to be born. And that we know they haven't. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago! ~ Charles Dickens

If Hamlet indeed thought not too much but too wisely, then Borges' Homer (who is also
Shakespeare) has thought not too well, but too endlessly. Partly Borges is satirizing Back to Methuselah, but he is also savaging
his own literary idealism. Without rivalry and polemic between the Immortals there is, paradoxically, no life, and literature dies .

For Borges, all theology is a division of fantastic literature. In "The Immortal" he observes with superb irony that despite their
professed belief in immortality, Jews, Christians, and Moslems venerate only this world because they truly believe only in it and bind future states to it only as rewards or punishments. ~ Harold Bloom

The Methuselah Complex
The Bible tells us that
Methuselah lived to 969 years of age.
Issac died at 180.
Do you think Jacob bemoaned the fact
that his dad didn't live to a ripe old age? ~ Beryl Dov

It's all right," she said. "You're through."
"Jesus," he finally managed, pushing water off his face. "Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. For that matter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John." Still not enough. He needed to reach back to the Old Testament for this. "Obadiah. Nebuchadnezzar. Methuselah and Job."
"Be calm," she said, taking him by the shoulders. "Be calm. And there are women in the Bible, you know."
"Yes. As I recall it, they were trouble, every last one. ~ Tessa Dare

The young mouse's eyes snapped open, clear and bright. He swung the ancient sword high and struck at the giant adder.
He struck for Redwall!
He struck against evil!
He struck for Martin!
He struck for Log-a-Log and his shrews!
He struck for dead Guosim!
He struck as Methuselah would have wanted him to!
He struck against Cluny the Scourge and tyranny!
He struck out against Captain Snow's ridicule!
He struck for the world of light and freedom!
He struck until his paws ached and the sword fell from them! ~ Brian Jacques

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I have several children - seven, to be exact - too many children for an atheist, certainly. Whenever my children complain about the planet to me, I say, Shut up! I just got here myself. Who do you think I am - Methuselah? You think I like the news of the day any better than you do? You're wrong. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

He died alone,' said Pious Dundas, old as Methuselah, unblinking. 'It don't matter a rat's ass whether there was anyone with him or not. He died alone. ~ Neil Gaiman

It does not pay a man to exist until the age of Methuselah by making his days indolent and useless. The more this is reflected upon, them ore the reflector will desire to undertake meaningful and useful actions, the more they will have lived. ~ Frederick The Great

You shouldn't have married an elderly man."
„Virgil was four and fifty when we wed," she [Daphne] said. „That is not exactly Methuselah."
„How old were you?"
„Nineteen and a half," she said.
„"You'd have done better with two husbands of seven and twenty," he said. ~ Loretta Chase

Often? That's a relative concept when you're in here." He licked his lips. They were chapped, startlingly red against the snow white of his Methuselah beard. ~ Joseph Finder

Had I represented twenty thousand voters in Michigan, that political editor would not have known nor cared whether I was the oldest or the youngest daughter of Methuselah, or whether my bonnet came from the Ark or from Worth's. ~ Susan B. Anthony

My hero is Methuselah. He lived a thousand years. ~ Marty Rubin

On one side of the ledger are the books man has written, containing such a hodgepodge of wisdom and nonsense, of truth and falsehood, that if one lived to be as old as Methuselah one couldn't disentangle the mess; on the other side of the ledger things like toenails, hair, teeth, blood, ovaries, if you will, all incalculable and all written in another kind of ink, in another script, an incomprehensible, undecipherable script. ~ Henry Miller