At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book. ...I had observed on ...printed fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ...So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My tender age in sorrow did begin: And still with sicknesses and shame... Thou did'st so punish sin, That I became Most thin. With Thee Let me combine And feel this day Thy victory;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years.... Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full pe...riod, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled ...business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside--from othe...rs. We do not accept it willingly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Art and science coincide insofar as both aim to improve the lives of men and women. The latter normally concerns itself with profi...t, the former with pleasure. In the coming age, art will fashion our entertainment out of new means of productivity in ways that will simultaneously enhance our profit and maximize our pleasure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries es...tablished by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into... a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. ... Death does away with time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,--muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and wor...ks that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »