Old Quotes

Where books had been a comfort before, they became a necessity, old books best of all: thick heavy tomes with stories that spread and twisted through other worlds, where he could walk like a ghost in the footsteps of other lives. ~ Alexia Casale

I knew I wanted to be an actress when I was 9 years old. ~ AnnaLynne McCord

The difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life is only a matter of perspective. Pull the blinds. Look around you. It is a mad, mad world and you do not require ten digit bank accounts to immerse yourself in it. Travel down dusty roads without a destination in mind. Climb a mountain and scream out into the void. Kiss the hell out of a stranger. Skinny dip in a lake. Get lost and lose yourself (they are two separate things). Explore the wilderness (especially the one within). Think less of destiny and more of the moment right here. Because when you are old and ill with your loved ones around you, fame won't matter, nor will the extent of your wealth. You are the sum of the stories you can tell. ~ Beau Taplin

This is a lesson everyone who studies language eventually learns. You cannot stop language change. You may not like it ; you may regret the arrival of new forms and the passing of old ones but there is not the slightest thing you can do about it. Language change is as natural as breathing. It is one of the linguistic facts of life. ~ David Crystal

I try to anticipate the ball well. That's something that's helped me since when I was a kid. Just learning to anticipate and read the game well. That's helped me. When I moved over to Spain and I was 15 I was playing with big guys who were 22 years to 28 years old and I was 15 so I couldn't beat them with power. I had to beat them with touch shots and variety and anticipation and all of those things. I learned a lot when I was over there. ~ Andy Murray

The United States Constitution turned 225 years old in 2012. It is the central document of American history and politics. From all sides of the political spectrum, from ranks of society low and high, it is ceaselessly venerated, admired, and invoked. But all too seldom is it read. It sometimes seems that Americans worship the Constitution so deeply that they find its actual text a distraction. ~ Garrett Epps

Everybody says: the Kremlin, the Kremlin. They all go on about it, but I've never seen it. The number of times (thousands) I've been drunk or hung over, traipsing round Moscow, north-south, east-west, end to end, straight through or any old way - and I've never once seen the Kremlin.

For instance, yesterday - yesterday I didn't see it again, though I was buzzing round that area the whole evening and it's not as if I was particularly drunk. I mean, as soon as I came out onto Savyelov Station, I had a glass of Zubrovka for starters, since I know from experience that as an early-morning tipple, nobody's so far dreamed up anything better.

Anyway, a glass of Zubrovka. Then after that - on Kalyaev Street - another glass, only not Zubrovka this time, but coriander vodka. A friend of mine used to say coriander had a dehumanizing effect on a person, i.e, it refreshes your parts but it weakens your spirit. For some reason or other it had the opposite effect on me, i.e., my spirit was refreshed, while my parts all went to hell. But I do agree it's dehumanizing, so that's why I topped it up with two glasses of Zhiguli beer, plus some egg-nog straight from the bottle, in the middle of Kalyaev Street.

Of course, you're saying: come on, Venya, get on with it - what did you have next? And I couldn't say for sure. I remember - I remember quite distinctly in fact - I had two glasses of Hunter's vodka, on Chekhov Street. But I couldn't have made it across th ~ Venedikt Erofeev

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece - all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round - more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. ~ Mark Twain

Harlem is not a playground for rich bankers and consultants. It's got students of all colors. It's got old people who keep history and tell tall tales. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

Santa was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. The after-action report was signed by the field commander, the director of operations, the secretary of the Office of Sidhe Affairs, and the chief battle-mage. Janus had signed it - and Janus's word could be counted upon for anything he chose to put his name to. Old Saint Nicholas, the Sidhe Lord of the Yuletide, was as dead as a door-nail.
It didn't stick. ~ Chris Lester

I was stunned. The steppe seemed to burst into bloom, heaving a sigh and drawing aside the veil of darkness, and I saw two lovers in its vast expanse. They did not seem to notice me, it was as if I was not there. I was walking along and watching as they, oblivious to the world, swayed together in tune with the song. And I did not recognize them. It was the same old Daniyar in his shabby army shirt unbuttoned at the throat, but his eyes seemed to gleam in the gloom. it was my Jamilia clinging to him, yet so quiet and timid, with teardrops sparkling upon her eyelashes. They were newly born, uniquely happy people. Was this not true happiness? Was not Daniyar giving this inspired music utterly to her, was he not singing for her, singing about her? ~ Chingiz Aitmatov

the modern return to heathenism has been a return not even to the heathen youth but rather to the heathen old age. But ~ G.K. Chesterton

You no longer speak of your old friends, your Council, your home. I fear that you are forgetting them, and forgetting your reason for coming here."

Hunter sighed. "It's difficult to talk about them, they don't belong here. Anyway, I thought you wanted me to give up my old life. Congratulations, you've won."

The Abate smiled sadly. "Perhaps I did, I wanted you to abandon your violent past and adopt our ways. But I see that you are giving up everything and taking on nothing. What are you afraid of George? ~ K.S. Marsden

I never met a white person till I was a grown man. I never went to school with a white till I was twenty-six years old, at Harvard Law School. The insult of segregation was searing and unforgettable. It has left a great scar, and will be with me for the rest of my life. ~ Randall Robinson

Johnny sighed in the darkness. "I don't understand the exact purpose of the Keats Project or the other Old Earth analogs, but I suspect that it is part of a TechnoCore project going back at least seven standard centuries to realize the Ultimate Intelligence."
"The Ultimate Intelligence," I said, exhaling smoke. "Uh-huh. So the TechnoCore is trying to ... what? ... to build God."
"Yes. ~ Dan Simmons

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

I think that the resistance against Darwin is not just the difficulty of seeing the power of a spectacularly beautiful explanation: it is the fear of realizing the extraordinary power that such an explanation has in shattering rests of old world views. ~ Carlo Rovelli

Ronda, you know why a guy in his twenties goes after sixteen-year-old girls? Because they're dumb enough to believe his bullshit. ~ Ronda Rousey

Buy old masters. They fetch a better price than old mistresses. ~ Max Aitken

I hope I die before I get old ~ The Who

Duny," said Geralt seriously, "Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That's why there are so few of us. We're growing old, dying, without anyone to pass our knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left." "Geralt," whispered Calanthe. "Yes, you're not wrong, queen. Duny! You will give me that which you already have but do not know. I'll return to Cintra in six years to see if destiny has been kind to me. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

I'm old, I'm young, I'm intelligent, I'm stupid. My tide goes in and out. ~ Warren Beatty

It's the old story. You might be able to fool your coaches, or your teammates, or your opponents. But, you can never fool yourself in anything. I believe that the more critical you are of your own performance- the higher standards you have-the better you become at what you do. ~ Don Maynard

The 'good old times' - all times when old are good. ~ George Gordon Byron

So long as our parents are alive, we are children. Then we become childish. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova

It's the old shell game. ~ Dan Rather

I started performing opera when I was 10 years old. I didn't perform as Zola Jesus until I was probably 18. ~ Zola Jesus

In the old Republican days the subject of slavery and of the saving of the Union made appeals to the consciences and liberty-loving instincts of the people. These later years have been full of talk about commerce and dinner pails, but I feel sure that the American conscience and the American love of liberty have not been smothered. They will break through this crust of sordidness and realize that those only keep their liberties who accord liberty to others. ~ Benjamin Harrison

I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll. ~ John C. Reilly

Outsong in the Jungle

[Baloo:] For the sake of him who showed
One wise Frog the Jungle-Road,
Keep the Law the Man-Pack make
For thy blind old Baloo's sake!
Clean or tainted, hot or stale,
Hold it as it were the Trail,
Through the day and through the night,
Questing neither left nor right.
For the sake of him who loves
Thee beyond all else that moves,
When thy Pack would make thee pain,
Say: "Tabaqui sings again."
When thy Pack would work thee ill,
Say: "Shere Khan is yet to kill."
When the knife is drawn to slay,
Keep the Law and go thy way.
(Root and honey, palm and spathe,
Guard a cub from harm and scathe!)

Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!

[Kaa:] Anger is the egg of Fear--
Only lidless eyes see clear.
Cobra-poison none may leech--
Even so with Cobra-speech.
Open talk shall call to thee
Strength, whose mate is Courtesy.
Send no lunge beyond thy length.
Lend no rotten bough thy strength.
Gauge thy gape with buck or goat,
Lest thine eye should choke thy throat.
After gorging, wouldst thou sleep ?
Look thy den be hid and deep,
Lest a wrong, by thee forgot,
Draw thy killer to the spot.
East and West and North and South,
Wash thy hide and close thy mouth.
(Pit and rift and blue pool-brim,
Middle-Jungle follow him!)

Wood and Water, W ~ Rudyard Kipling

As well as the [League of Nations] delegates themselves and their suites, there were innumerable campaigners of one sort and another, male and female, clerical and lay, young and old; all with some notion to publicise, some pet solution to offer, some organisation to promote. They gathered in droves, fanning out through the city, and settling in hotels and pensions, from the Lakeside ones down to tiny obscure back-street establishments. Ferocious ladies with moustaches, clergymen with black leather patches on the elbows of their jackets or cassocks and smelling of tobacco smoke, mad admirals who knew where to find the lost tribes of Israel, and scarcely saner generals who deduced prophetic warnings from the measurement of the pyramids; but one and all believers in the League's historic role to deliver mankind painlessly and inexpensively from the curse of war to the great advantage of all concerned. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

It's like what you might call Goldilocks' dilemma in the old fairy tale. Young men see women as "less than" or "better than," but never their equals. And studies indicate that equality is the best foundation for a healthy relationship. ~ Michael Kimmel

I've always been an old soul. ~ Jami Attenberg

When we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed. ~ Alexander Pope

I just close my eyes and act like I'm a 3-year-old. I try to get as close to a childlike level as possible because we were all artists back then. So you just close your eyes and think back to when you were as young as you can remember and had the least barriers to your creativity. ~ Kanye West

Ours has been an expansionist society, but that narrative must change as we run out of places to expand into. But our culture is like a cart stuck in the same old rut that has been leading us in one direction. The longer we've been using a path, the deeper the ruts get, the harder it is to escape them. We've been moving ever Westward, but there's only so far we can go in that direction before we fall into the ocean. It's a direction that we cannot continue on forever, but the breaking of those ruts will require a major rupture. The old narrative is dying, and it will be quite a crushing of gears before things are re-adjusted. A shared story is needed for a civilization to endure. ~ James Rozoff

Pa did not like a country so old and worn out that the hunting was poor. He wanted to go west. For two years he had wanted to go west and take a homestead, but Ma did not want to leave the settled country. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

There's a story behind every old ballad or work song or nonsense song that I ever knew. Sometimes it's a fascinating story. A story of people struggling for freedom, struggling to get along in this old world. ~ Pete Seeger

The world helps you to keep evolving and hope it's for better. You have to rise above all the tragedies in life. You have to grow, and if you stop growing, you are old. ~ Hrithik Roshan

Yes. Laugh. But there's sense in the old rules. They kept people out of trouble.' He was annoyed because I laughed, and said that a woman in my position needed extra dignity of behaviour. 'What position?' - I was suddenly very angry, because of the trapped feeling women get at such moments. ~ Doris Lessing

I began auditioning for acting jobs at the ripe old age of 12. Thirty years later, including a 15-year run on television, I sometimes just get offers for work. Often, however, I am still required to run pell-mell around Los Angeles or New York, interviewing for film and TV jobs. ~ Diane Farr

See, phrenology is this old Victorian science, which claimed you could determine the dominant traits of a man's personality by studying the bumps on his head. The size and position of these bumps indicated different personality traits. See? Now, /retro-phrenology/ says, why not change a man's personality by hitting him on the head with a hammer, till you raise just the right bumps in the right places!"
"One of us needs a lot more drinks," said Alex. "That's starting to make sense. ~ Simon R. Green

I wept for relationships not possible due to denial and dreams locked in the back of people's minds, all of the bits of life that lay dormant until the babblings of televisions and nursing homes sweep them away. It makes me wonder how many of the dreams we had originally have already been forgotten. ~ Christopher Hawke

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered ... it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I couldn't rid myself of the sense that Roy was in danger somehow, that old demons were driving him toward an abyss, and that if only I was a better brother, my intervention would prevent his fall. ~ Barack Obama

It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form. ~ Michel Foucault

You'd better be thinking of me when you smile like that," Cooper said, now standing beside me. I hadn't heard him come into the kitchen. I bumped his hip with mine. "Of course I'm thinking about you." "Then why aren't you hard?" he asked, looking pointedly at my crotch. Before I could say anything, he said, "They have pills now, for old guys who can't get hard. ~ N.R. Walker

When I was four, I think I just wanted to make noise. When I was about 10 years old I was given five CDs for my birthday: Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon, the Sex Pistols, Prodigy, Jimi Hendrix, and I can't remember the fifth one, but really different kinds of music. That's when I started to grasp it and enjoy it, listening to it. Then I started being in bands at school. ~ Eliot Paulina Sumner

Aye," the prince said. "I told the story to Ser Balon, but not all of it. As the children splashed in the pools, Daenerys watched from amongst the orange trees, and a realization came to her. She could not tell the highborn from the low. Naked, they were only children. All innocent, all vulnerable, all deserving of long life, love, protection. "There is your realm," she told her son and heir, "remember them, on everything you do." My own mother said those same words to me when I was old enough to leave the pools. It is an easy thing for a prince to call the spears, but in the end the children pay the price. For their sake, the wise prince will wage non war without good cause, nor any war he cannot hope to win.
"I am not blind, nor deaf. I know that you all believe me weak, frightened, feeble. Your father knew me better. Oberyn was ever the viper. Deadly, dangerous, unpredictable. No man dared tread on him. I was the grass. Pleasant, complaisant, sweet-smelling, swaying with every breeze. Who fears to walk upon the grass? But it is the grass that hides the viper from his enemies and shelters him until he strikes. Your father and I worked more closely than you know...but now he is gone. The question is, can I trust his daughters to serve me in his place? ~ George R.R. Martin

When I was a kid, like four or five years old, I was obsessed with the 'Batman' TV show in the '60s. And I took it totally seriously. At that age, I took it completely seriously. I didn't get the fact that it was kind of played for laughs. I didn't understand why my mom was rolling her eyes or chuckling. ~ Lee Bermejo

My 80-year-old mother will not buy her heart medicine because it cost more than she can pay with social security. She is America. ~ Jack Bowman

The church was old and grey, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round the porch. Shunning the tombs, it crept about the mounds, beneath which slept poor humble men: twining for them the first wreaths they had ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither and far more lasting in their kind, than some which were graven deep in stone and marble, and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly hidden for many a year, and only revealed at last to executors and mourning legatees. ~ Charles Dickens

Who," coughed Zvonok, "do you think broke your favorite teacup last fall? The one with the cherries on the handle?"
"I was careless, Comrade Zvonok. I left the window open and a storm blew through."
"Incorrect! I broke it because you left me no cream and no dry biscuits, and when your old boots wore through, you burned them up for heat instead of giving them to me!"
"Hear, hear!" the table erupted in approval once more. "Well done, well done!"
"I'm surely very sorry
"
"So is your teacup. ~ Catherynne M Valente

This is an example of what Jung called "the regressive restoration of the persona," namely, the re-identification with a former position, role, ideology because it offers a predictable content, security, and script. In the face of the new and uncertain, we often return to the old place, which is why we so often stop growing. (It has become clear to me, for example, that aging itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities. ~ James Hollis

Now it is so; 'twas so of old. ~ Lao-Tzu

Recall Marx's fundamental insight about the "bourgeois" limitation of the logic of equality: capitalist inequalities ("exploitation") are not the "unprincipled violations of the principle of equality," but are absolutely inherent to the logic of equality, they are the paradoxical result of its consistent realization. What we have in mind here is not only the wearisome old motif of how market exchange presupposes formally/legally equal subjects who meet and interact in the market; the crucial moment of Marx's critique of "bourgeois" socialists is that capitalist exploitation does not involve any kind of "unequal" exchange between the worker and the capitalist - this exchange is fully equal and "just," ideally (in principle), the worker gets paid the full value of the commodity he is selling (his labor-power). Of course, radical bourgeois revolutionaries are aware of this limitation; however, the way they try to counteract it is through a direct "terroristic imposition of more and more de facto equality (equal salaries, equal access to health services…), which can only be imposed through new forms of formal inequality (different sorts of preferential treatments for the underprivileged). In short, the axiom of equality" means either not enough (it remains the abstract form of actual inequality) or too much (enforce "terroristic" equality) - it is a formalistic notion in a strict dialectical sense, that is, its limitation is precisely that its form is not concrete enough, but a ~ Slavoj Zizek

Feelings do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don't know, but it's a world where there's no time, so space, no frontiers. ~ Paulo Coelho

We were supposed to survive together. We were supposed to leave and live and grow old together. But instead, his death is a sacrifice for my life, a life I no longer want. ~ Halo Scot

I don't want to get old. I have this very silly fear, dear friend, that one day I'll be old, without ever having really been young. ~ Beatrice Sparks

Perhaps no two events ever united so intimately and forceably to combat and expel prejudice, as the Revolution of America, and the Alliance with France. Their effects are felt, and their influence already extends as well to the old world as the new. Our style and manner of thinking have undergone a revolution, more extraordinary than the political revolution of the country. We see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. ~ Thomas Paine

My father Bill had a problem with Christmas. Although he appears in old photographs to possess a whippy, muscular frame, he was actually a frail man and usually managed to cause some kind of drama just before the festivities began. ~ Christopher Fowler

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

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? ~ Truman Capote

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

There's no one else to blame. No Bores or Old Ladies or Norton or Assassins waiting at the bridge. ~ Paul Zindel

When you play the old songs, it's awesome and I love it, but it's not work because everyone already knows it and it's easy. I have to break the crowd in on a new song and that's what is kind of cool and fun. ~ Shwayze

While the body is young and fine, the soul blunders, but as the body grows old it attains its highest power. Again, every good soul uses mind; but no body can produce mind: for how should that which is without mind produce mind? Again, while the soul uses the body as an instrument, it is not in it; just as the engineer is not in his engines (although many engines move without being touched by any one). ~ Sallust

As for developing a writing style'I would say that I tried to copy the pacing of the old movies I loved as a kid. ~ Kola Boof

It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends, and it's not the glamour of the Presidency, or the wonder of going to receive the Nobel Prize. All those are important, of course. But maybe it's just that I'm 71 years old now. It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends. I would tell them that. Don't forget that. In your brilliance, don't turn your back on your friends. Don't think you're entitled to something, you're smarter than the next guy. ~ George H. W. Bush

I left Bulgaria when I was a seventeen-year-old East European, and I am now, by all appearances, a 32-year-old 'global soul'. But everybody needs a borrowed 'us' from time to time, even a global soul. And after half a lifetime and several other countries, the Bulgarian 'us' is still the only honest one I have. ~ Kapka Kassabova

My diagnosis," he said
"for better or worse,
is that your son is the result
of an old pharaoh's curse. ~ Tim Burton

Seventh letter : Life's simplest pleasures are life's greatest joys

Most people dont discover whats most important in life untill they are too old to do anything about it. They spend many of their best years pursuing things that matter little in the end. While society invites us to fill our with material objects, the best part of us knows that the more basic pleasures are the ones that enriches and sustain us. No matter how easy or hard our conditions, we all have wealth of simple blessings around us - waiting to be continued. As we do our happiness grows. Our gratitude expands. And each day becomes a breathtaking gift. ~ Robin S. Sharma

I just want to show the world it's never too late to get your diploma, and show kids they should stay in school and not wait until you're old to get it. ~ Flavor Flav

Didn't anyone stop to reflect that the so-called old people of today used to smoke pot, for heaven's sake, and wear bandannas tied around their heads and picket the White House? When Amanda chided her for saying that something was "cool" ("I hate it when the older generation tries to copy the younger," she had said), did she not realize that "cool" had been used in Abby's time, too, not to mention long before? ~ Anne Tyler

He shakes his head with a slow smile. You'd better be right. If the phone rings, I'm unpluggining it, I swear to God-"
You'd do that to your five-year-old sister?" I gasp in mock outrage.
For one whole night alone? Jesus, Maya, I'd sell her to the gypsies! ~ Tabitha Suzuma

We'll never know. In the summer of 1971, against the advice of his mother, Howard Myers took a vacation to Florida. The combination of the heat and his medical condition combined to give him a massive heart attack which killed him. He was forty-one years old. There ~ Howard L. Myers

Then all at once there was a flutterment and a scufflement and a loud "Squeak!"

The other squirrels scuttered away into the bushes.

When they came back very cautiously, peeping round the tree--there was Old Brown sitting on his door-step, quite still, with his eyes closed, as if nothing had happened.

But Nutkin was in his waistcoat pocket!

This looks like the end of the story; but it isn't. ~ Beatrix Potter

There's nothing like the feel of an old book in your hands. ~ Kathryn Shay

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries - the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care. ~ Herbert Hoover

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but giving up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. You are as young as your faith and as old as your doubts; as young as you self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. ~ James E. Faust

You used to get it in your fishnets
Now you only get it in your nightdress
Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness ...
... Remeber when the boys were all electric? ~ Arctic Monkeys

Old-school viewers remain adamant that 'The Real World' has deteriorated, as if the original enterprise were some pristine experiment that got sullied as the conditions in the lab got sloppier. ~ Andrea Seigel

This is a faithless old world. Men and women are hardheaded, pleasure-mad, money crazy. They write up their successes and say, "The power and might of my hand have done these things." God has been ruled out; consequently, the thrill and romance of true living are gone for most people. ~ Lee Roberson

Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old. ~ Shelagh Delaney

This report is maybe 12-years-old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried till River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear because there's a whole universe of folk who are gonna know it, too. They're gonna see it. Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people ... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave. ~ Joss Whedon

The old need the company of the young so that they renew their contact with life. ~ Indira Gandhi

This image of his remained in the forefront of my memory so long, I think, because life itself can seem a lot like that: a matter of holding one's self-respect together, instead of a horse, as one's self-respect is expected to hurdle fences and hedges and water. My dear thirteen-year-old daughter Lily, having become a pretty adolescent, appears to me, as do most American adolescents, to be holding her self-respect together the best she can in a really scary steeplechase. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

[T]welve year old Libby O'Shea coasted on a homemade swing, toes touching a blinding-blue heaven dolloped with clouds. ~ Julie Lessman

And maybe I was a little intense. But not as much as the princess who marched into that court in a very unprofessional pair of jeans and a T-shirt, looking like she had gone to hell and back
and was about to drag the rest of us back there with her, just like I kinda planned to do.
I knew it in a split second
and everybody else knew it too, even old Fabio
that we weren't just seeing a princess standing there in a pair of jeans and boots.
We were all getting our first glimpse of the next queen. ~ Beth Fantaskey

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there. ~ Haruki Murakami

Uselessness
Let mine not be the saddest fate of all,
To live beyond my greater self; to see
My faculties decaying, as the tree
Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall
Let me hear rather the imperious call,
Which all men dread, in my glad morning time,
And follow death ere I have reached my prime,
Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall.
The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast
Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day
Is kinder than the calm that lets it last,
Unhappy witness of its own decay.
May no man ever look on me and say,
'She lives, but all her usefulness is past. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Surely it would be easier to be a stork than a seventeen-year-old girl. ~ Carrie Anne Noble

I like to hope that there are more good people in the world than evil people' she said. 'I would like to hope that too', the old man said, 'but I don't. There are good people, however, and our duty in life is to be one of them, even though we will generally be outnumbered. ~ Janette Turner Hospital

The worship of power is an old religion. ~ George Santayana

We lived in a safe, family-friendly area, but parts of London were rough, as you'd expect from any large city. Mark had a knack for attracting muggers. One time, we were in a train station and a little kid--no more than about eight years old--came up to him: "Oi, mate, give me your phone." We always carried the cool Nokia phones with the Snake game on them, and they were the hot item. It was like inviting trouble carrying one around, but we didn't care.
Mark thought the mini-mugger was crazy: "Are you kidding me? No way." Then he looked over his shoulder and realized the kid wasn't alone; he had a whole gang with him. So Mark handed over his phone and the kid ran off. I never let him live down the fact that an eight-year-old had mugged him.
I had my own incident as well, but I handled it a little differently. I got off the train at Herne Hill station and noticed that two guys were following me. I could hear their footsteps getting closer and closer. "Give us your backpack," they threatened me.
"Why? All I have is my homework in here," I tried to reason with them. They had seen me on the train with my minidisc player and they knew I was holding out on them. "Give it," they threatened.
My bag was covered with key chains and buttons, and as I took it off my shoulder, pretending to give it to them, I swung it hard in their faces. All that hardware knocked one of them to the ground and stunned the other. With my bag in my hand, I ran the mile home without ever ~ Derek Hough

There used to be a canny politician in the Hyde Park area in Chicago in which I at one time lived for several years. His slogan was "I am for harmony if I have to use an axe." As "Secretary of Charm," if and when my merits and ambitions are recognized by my appointment to that office, I will take a page out of old "Doc" Jamieson's book. My motto will be "I will have charm, even if I have to use a club. ~ Beatrice Fairfax

We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt. ~ Esther Perel

As a young father it's important to remember that, when you're at the beach, there's a BIG difference between telling your five year old son to just go pee in the ocean and telling him to get in the water at least waist deep and then pee in the ocean. ~ Spuds Crawford

This didn't seem to have anything to do with Old Narnia, which was what Caspian really wanted to hear about, but getting up in the middle of the night is always interesting and he was moderately pleased. ~ C.S. Lewis

When I was in the Navy, everyone fell under the purview of "navy gray". It is the military's way of reminding its enlisted personnel that they are all equal. Man or woman, black or white, young or old, everyone was navy gray. With God's grace I can proudly say a better understanding of this concept has helped me ameliorate disputes, mend fences that appeared hopeless and find light in the midst of darkness. ~ Carlos Wallace