An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if ti...ed by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are often made to feel that there is another youth and age than that which is measured from the year of our natural birth. Some... thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Probably the profoundest difference between human and animal needs is made by one piece of human awareness, one fact that is not p...resent to animals, because it is never learned in any direct experience: that is our foreknowledge of death. The fact that we ourselves must die is not a simple and isolated fact. It is built on a wide survey of facts that discloses the structure of history as a succession of overlapping brief lives, the patterns of youth and age, growth and decline; and above all that, it is built on the logical insight that one's own life is a case in point. Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and ...age are equally a burden.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can just remember an old brown-coated man who was the Walton of this stream, who had come over from Newcastle, England, with his... son,--the latter a stout and hearty man who had lifted an anchor in his day. A straight old man he was, who took his way in silence through the meadows, having passed the period of communication with his fellows; his old experienced coat, hanging long and straight and brown as the yellow pine bark, glittering with so much smothered sunlight, if you stood near enough, no work of art but naturalized at length. I often discovered him unexpectedly amid the pads and the gray willows when he moved, fishing in some old country method,--for youth and age then went a-fishing together,--full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance about his own Tyne and Northumberland. He was always to be seen in serene afternoons haunting the river, and almost rustling with the sedge; so many sunny hours in an old man's life, entrapping silly fish; almost grown to be the sun's familiar; what need had he of hat or raiment any, having served out his time, and seen through such thin disguises? I have seen how his coeval fates rewarded him with the yellow perch, and yet I thought his luck was not in proportion to his years; and I have seen when, with slow steps and weighed down with aged thoughts, he disappeared with his fish under his low-roofed house on the skirts of the village. I think nobody else saw him; nobody else remembers him now, for he soon after died, and migrated to new Tyne streams. His fishing was not a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a sort of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world, just as the aged read their Bibles.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 »
Youth, large, lusty, loving--Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal... grace, force, fascination?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »