Ageing Quotes (page 93)
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And confronting these men, wild and terrible as we agree that they were, there were men of quite another kind, smiling and adorned with ribbons and stars, silk stockinged, yellow gloved and with polished boots; men who insisted on the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of bigotry, ignorance, enslavement, the death penalty and war, and who, talking in polished undertones, glorified the sword and the executioners' block. For our part, if we had to choose between the...
Victor Hugo
I believe we must do things in our lives for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing them, with no expectation of getting something back in return. Otherwise, we are constantly being disappointed." She moved her turquoise bracelet back and forth on her wrist. "So I had two sons, John and Richard, because I wanted to, not because I thought they would rescue me in old age. I got out of all social organizations and clubs in my fifties so I could spend time with my grandchildren, not...
Terry Tempest Williams
Until you're about the age of twenty you read everything, and you like it simply because you are reading it. then between twenty and thirty you pick up what you want, and you read the best, you read all the great works. after that you sit and wait for them to be written. But you know the least know, the least famous writers, they are the better ones.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats; but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
every night, when he didn't want to be alone, or to age or die, with that set expression he assumed which she occasionally recognized on other men's faces, the only common expression of those madmen hiding under an appearance of wisdom until the madness seizes them and hurls them desperately toward a woman's body to bury in it, without desire, everything terrifying that solitude and night reveals to them.
Albert Camus
At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history every published. Think of that. Of course yes, Tolstoy and of course yes Keats and blah blah and yes indeed of course yes. But we're living in an age that has a tremendous richness of invention. And some of the most inventive people get no...
Nicholson Baker
At lunch break [from cheesemaking] I checked out the wildly colorful powder room, where a quote from Alice in Wonderland was painted on the wall: There's no use in trying,' Alice said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Barbara Kingsolver