Old Man Quotes - Page 9

• Whosoever you are who introduce new doctrines, I beseech you to spare the ears of Romans! Spare that faith which was commended by the voice of an Apostle. Why should you attempt to teach us, at the end of hundreds of years, that which we never heard before? Why bring forward what Peter and Paul did not will to make known? Until this day, the world was Christian without your doctrine. Thus, I hold as an old man onto that faith wherein I was regenerated as a boy.

  St. Jerome

  Christian, Boys, Men

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• What is life when you come to think upon it, but a most excellent, accurately set, infinitely complicated machine for turning fat playful puppies into old mangy blind dogs, and proud war horses into skinny nags, and succulent young boys, to whom the world holds great delights and terrors, into old weak men, with running eyes, who drink ground rhino-horn?

  Isak Dinesen

  Running, Dog, Horse

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• All men [are] of one metal, but not in one mold.

  John Lyly

  Men, Mold, Metals

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• The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.

  John Stuart Mill

  Men, Principles, Opinion

  John Stuart Mill (2015). “On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays”, p.260, OUP Oxford

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• That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations-at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.

  William Butler Yeats

  Death, Summer, Country

  "Sailing to Byzantium" l. 1 (1928)

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• They were upon their great theme: "When I get to be a man!" Being human, though boys, they considered their present estate too commonplace to be dwelt upon. So, when the old men gather, they say: "When I was a boy!" It really is the land of nowadays that we never discover.

  Booth Tarkington

  Boys, Men, Land

  Booth Tarkington (2013). “The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection”, p.2630, eBookIt.com

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• God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.224, Velvet Element Books

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• We have reached the age, those of us to whom fortune has assigned a post in life's struggle, when beaten and smashed and biffed by the lashing of the dragon's tail, we begin to appreciate that the old man was not such a fool after all. We saw our parents wrestling with the same dragon, and we thought, though we never spoke a thought aloud, 'Why doesn't he hit him on the head?' Alas, comrads, we know now. We have hit the dragon on the head and we have seen the dragon smile.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Struggle, Wrestling, Men

  Speech at Thayer's tenth anniversary reunion at Harvard, 1895.

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• I never sleep alone. If there is no one to sleep next to, I'll sleep next to a stuffed animal. It makes me feel secure and safe. It's a little embarrassing to admit it; I'm an old man now. It's important to me though.

  Keith Richards

  Sleep, Men, Animal

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• Old men grasp more at life than babies, and leave it with a much worse grace than young people. It is because all their labours having been for this life, they perceive at last their trouble lost.

  Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

  Baby, Men, People

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• A child is not frightened at the thought of being patiently transmuted into an old man.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Children, Men, Frightened

  Antoine de Saint Exupery (1942). “Flight to Arras”

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• How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Girl, Children

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Lee Grossman (2005). “A Year with Emerson: A Daybook”, p.197, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways.

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Childhood, Age

  Elie Wiesel (1990). “From the kingdom of memory: reminiscences”, Pocket Books

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• Do you believe in God? Perhaps you aren't old enough. The reason old people believe in God is because they've given up believing in anything else, and one can't exist without faith in something.... God is a sort of burglar. As a young man you knock him down; as an old man, you try to conciliate him because he may knock you down. Moral: don't grow old.

  Hesketh Pearson

  God, Believe, Men

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• Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer. In the old man, Nature has fulfilled her work; she loads him with blessings; she fills him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.

  James Anthony Froude

  Beautiful, Summer, Children

  James Anthony Froude (1907). “Essays”

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• At least us old men remember what a real bear market is like, and the young men haven't got a clue.

  Jeremy Grantham

  Real, Men, Bears

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• The most critical need of the church at this moment is men, bold men, free men. The church must seek, in prayer and much humility, the coming again of men made of the stuff of which prophets and martyrs are made.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Prayer, Humility, Men

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• "You are old, Father William," the young man cried, "The few locks which are left you are gray; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,- Now tell me the reason I pray."

  Robert Southey

  Father, Men, Locks

  "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them" l. 1 (1799) See Carroll 9

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• Anyone can practice. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn't have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can't practice Ashtanga yoga.

  K. Pattabhi Jois

  Yoga, Men, Lazy People

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• Simultaneously I am myself, the child I was, the old man I will be.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Children, Men

  Peter Matthiessen (2008). “The Snow Leopard”, p.195, Penguin

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• And in any case, to the old man, when the world becomes trite, the triteness arises not so much from a cessation as from a transference of interest. What is taken from this world is given to the next. The glory is in the east in the morning, it is in the west in the afternoon, and when it is dark the splendour is irradiating the realm of the under-world. He would only follow.

  Alexander Smith

  Morning, Taken, Dark

  Alexander Smith (1914). “Dreamthorp”

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• Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. That is why young men die in battle for their countrys sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.

  Walter Lippmann

  Country, Strong, Men

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.87, Harvard University Press

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• I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people.

  Richard Avedon

  Men, People, Tree

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• All wars are planned by old men in council rooms apart.

  Grantland Rice

  War, Men, Rooms

  "Two Sides of War" l. 1 (1930) See Herbert Hoover 5

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• Safety razors make it hard to grow beards in America: America would be a better place if there were a few bearded, savage, terrible old men.

  Lewis Mumford

  Men, America, Safety

  Lewis Mumford (1979). “My works and days: a personal chronicle”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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