Old Arcadia Quotes

O that we had, to make our woes more public,
Seas in our eyes, and brazen tongues by nature,
A yelling voice, and hearts composed of sorrow,
Breath made of flames, wits knowing naught but damage,
Our sports murd'ring ourselves, our musics wailing,
Our studies fixed upon the falls of fortune. ~ Philip Sidney

I know now one must plan one's old age as surely as one plans any other stage of life. The tragedy of Cousin Josie's life is that she never knew what she wanted at any age - only what she did not want. She never wanted to marry nor to pursue a career, and in life, unlike grammar, double negatives do not produce an affirmative. ~ Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

Canada is an Aboriginal country as well as a settler country. We rarely see ourselves that way, but it is past time that we started doing so. The fact that settlers are in a significant majority does not take away from the simple fact that when Europeans made first contact with the northern half of North America, there were millions of people already here. From the Beothuk in Newfoundland – a population completely wiped out by disease and violence – across every corner of Canada to the far west and north, Canada's first people had built a civilization, a way of life thousands of years old and rich in diversity. They were not "savages" (as they were called, in French and English), nor were they "ignorant wretches", nor were they less than people. They had developed complex societies with distinct languages, systems of governance; they were real people with a real way of life. ~ Bob Rae

I found out the differences between "the truth" and "all the truth." You can know some pretty terrible things about a person, and you can know they're true. But sometimes it makes a huge difference if you know what else is true too. I read something in a book once about an old lady who was walking along the street minding her own business when a young guy came charging along, knocked her down, rolled her in a mud puddle, slapped her head and smeared handsful of wet mud all over her hair. Now what should you do with a guy like that?
But then if you find out that someone had got careless with a drum of gasoline and it ignited and the old lady was splashed with it, and the guy had presence of mind enough to do what he did as fast as he did, and severely burned his hands in the doing of it, then what should you do with him?
Yet everything reported about him is true. The only difference is the amount of truth you tell. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

It occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can. ~ Bill Bryson

The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it is also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Soulmates aren't the ones who make you happiest, no. They're instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope. ~ Victoria Erickson

He was not sure that there were any great moments. Things were not the same and now life only came in flashes. He had flashes of the old greatness with his bulls, but they were not of value because he had discounted them in advance when he had picked the bulls out for their safety, getting out of a motor and leaning on a fence, looking over at the herd on the ranch of his friend the bull-breeder. So he had two small, manageable bulls without much horns, and when he felt the greatness again coming, just a little of it through the pain that was always with him, it had been discounted and sold in advance, and it did not give him a good feeling. It was the greatness, but it did not make bull-fighting wonderful to him any more. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit. ~ Wallace Stegner

Life is a strange thing. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt. Yet we love life and we hate death. It is very strange. ~ Jack London

He did not understand her. They were not the same. The garage, the trial, the old man with his head in his hands
his mother, struggling to breathe
those things were horrors. The mess under Layla's clothes was a game and he hated her for making a part of it, for ever coming near him. ~ Kelly Braffet

Getting old is horrible, but it is interesting ... one of the things I've realized is that growing old is compulsory, but growing up is optional. ~ Sebastian Horsley

She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt or fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials ... She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall. ~ John Steinbeck

It seems that these old cards were conceived deep in the guts of human experience, at the most profound level of the human psyche. It is to this level in ourselves that they will speak. ~ Sallie Nichols

I know first hand what its like to be called names and to be affected by things. They would call me fat, they would call me promiscuous in different words. At the time, when I was 12-years-old, that was like the end of the world. To me, bullying is one of my biggest platforms. Lets change the world. ~ Demi Lovato

The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls. ~ Haruki Murakami

One of the reasons why old people make so many journeys into the past is to satisfy themselves that it is still there. ~ Ronald Blythe

I learned a woman is never an old woman. ~ Joni Mitchell

There's an old Celtic proverb that I follow: See much, study much, suffer much is the path to wisdom. ~ Greg Jackson

Swearing on the Bible, you understand that shit? They tell you to raise your right hand and put your left hand on the Bible. Does this stuff really matter, which hand? Does God really give a fuck about details like this? Suppose you put your right hand on the Bible and you raise your left hand. Would that count? Or would God say, 'Sorry, wrong hand, try again'? And why does one hand have to be raised? [...] But let's get back to the Bible, America's favorite national theatrical prop.

Suppose the Bible they hand you to swear on is upside down, or backward, or both, and you swear to tell the truth on an upside-down backward Bible. Would that count? Suppose the Bible they hand you is an old Bible and half the pages are missing. Suppose all they have is a Chinese Bible. In an American court. Or a Braille Bible, and you're not blind. Suppose they hand you an upside-down, backward, Chinese, Braille Bible with half the pages missing. At what point does all of this stuff just break down and become just a lot of stupid shit that somebody made up? They fuckin' made it up, folks, it's make-believe! It's make-believe [...] Bible or no Bible, God or no God, if it suits their purposes, people are going to lie in court. ~ George Carlin

It's a dream for me to work with Ron MacLean and Don Cherry as well as my old friend Jeff Marek, who I started my career with. ~ George Stroumboulopoulos

But if you judge safety to be the paramount consideration in life you should never, under any circumstances, go on long hikes alone. Don't take short hikes alone, either – or, for that matter, go anywhere alone. And avoid at all costs such foolhardy activities as driving, falling in love, or inhaling air that is almost certainly riddled with deadly germs. Wear wool next to the skin. Insure every good and chattel you possess against every conceivable contingency the future might bring, even if the premiums half-cripple the present. Never cross an intersection against a red light, even when you can see all roads are clear for miles. And never, of course, explore the guts of an idea that seems as if it might threaten one of your more cherished beliefs. In your wisdom you will probably live to be a ripe old age. But you may discover, just before you die, that you have been dead for a long, long time. ~ Colin Fletcher

Witchcraft involves being willing to understand and embrace your true self. It is about exploring your light and learning to celebrate your darkness. ~ Dacha Avelin

What's that old saying? "Advice is like opinions. Everyone's an asshole. ~ The Believer Magazine

I weighed 245 pounds when I was 16 years old. I had a 44-inch waist. And that was two years before 'Dukes of Hazzard' started. ~ John Schneider

You mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before
" "The writers," Pris said, "made it up. ~ Philip K. Dick

If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit. ~ Terry Pratchett

I'm against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray. ~ Neal Shusterman

Old age is a woman's hell. ~ Ninon De L'Enclos

But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota. ~ Sarah Vowell

Ah, my old friend, anxiety-throwing itself into the blender with sheer terror and embarrassment. ~ Myra McEntire

A funny thing happens when you have nothing left to live for. Your existence loses all its sharp edges. There are no more steep drops, no hills to climb. Colors blur and muddle together until your surroundings are a bunch of meaningless shapes and figures painted in the same shade of gray. There's nothing that could possibly surprise you or resurrect those old sensations of joy or fear. No humans could be as unfeeling, as numb, as you are. And then, just when you're getting lulled into the monotonous routine, something snaps. No more. ~ Alexandra Monir

What is God doing in my life? In the mornings, I wake to find that he has traced the world in silver. Every blade of grass. Each pumpkin on the porch. In the afternoons, I find him washing these fields with the mellow sunlight of autumn. He has gilded every rail in the fence and the sheet metal roof of the old red barn. He has transformed familiar trees into something otherworldly. ~ Christie Purifoy

The following is a list of statements made many years ago by experts in their fields. At the time they were said they sounded intelligent. With the passing of time, they sound idiotic. ~ Sean Covey

To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear ~ Marilynne Robinson

The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one. ~ James Goldsmith

William Goldman's Marathon Man was a novel that taught me about suspense. I was maybe 16 years old when I read it and I remember thinking, "You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't put this book down." I loved that feeling - and want to give it others. ~ Harlan Coben

I burned down my backyard as a seven-year-old. I poured kerosene over dried leaves and set the whole place on fire, just for fun. Yeah, not a very normal thing to do. ~ Emraan Hashmi

In every believer's heart there is a constant struggle between the old nature and the new. The old nature is very active, and loses no opportunity of plying all the weapons of its deadly armoury against newborn grace; while on the other hand, the new nature is ever on the watch to resist and destroy its enemy. Grace within us will employ prayer, and faith, and hope, and love, to cast out the evil; it takes unto it the "whole armour of God," and wrestles earnestly. These two opposing natures will never cease to struggle so long as we are in this world. The battle of "Christian" with "Apollyon" lasted three hours, but the battle of Christian with himself lasted all the way from the Wicket Gate to the river Jordan. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Most women are indulgent of themselves. This is a mistake. It should be only the reward of old age. ~ Anna Held

Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending. ~ Anne Bradstreet

Doorway. In Palestine, at least, no one would burst into tears at the sight of her. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Tedi traced her name into the dirt and remembered Mr. Loederman's wife, Lena, an old-fashioned woman who wore crocheted collars. They had had a grown son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. All dead, she realized. She should have hugged him back. The accordion raced up a scale. Young voices ~ Anita Diamant

Allow [Jesus] the access to that old nature through total surrender to Him and His Word. Once you do this without reservation, you will enter a new conquering lifestyle as well as a higher quality of life.

John 8:36
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. ~ Mark T. Barclay

Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and have fallen asleep. ~ Stanislaw Ulam