Quotes About Wisdom

Age 45. — At sixteen I was stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

Age 48. — I am forty-eight years old, it is time for my life to begin.

Age 49. — A man's physical prime is between the ages of thirty and thirty-five; the prime time for his soul and capacity for thought is around forty-nine.

Age 50. — When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his forties shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again.

Age 50. — At 50 a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass.

Ages 50+. — The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

Late 50s. — ...on the shady side of fifty...

Age 59. — With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.

Ages 60+. — Picasso said to me the other day: "One starts to get young at the age of sixty — and then it's too late." Only then does one start to feel free; only then has one learned to strip oneself down to one's essential creative simplicity...

Age 67. — Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young — I mean, for a whole day at a time.

Ages 70+. — The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

Age 80. — Anyone who stops learning is old, whether this happens at 20 or at 80. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young, but becomes constantly more valuable, regardless of physical capacity.

Ages 100–101. — May you live to be a hundred years With one extra year to repent.

"Que scais-je?" was the motto of Montaigne, As also of the first academicians: That all is dubious which man may attain, Was one of their most favourite positions. There's no such thing as certainty, that's plain As any of Mortality's conditions; So little do we know what we're about in This world, I doubt if doubt itself would be doubting.

It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man.

There's more to the truth than just the facts.

Before enlightenment — chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment — chop wood, carry water.

When you get there, there isn't any there there.

Eggs cannot be unscrambled.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.

Poverty is the sister of a sound mind.

The Child is father of the Man...

To speak French does not mean wits.

The tall tree sees far but the traveling seed sees farther.