Quotes
Quotes about Age
Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.
Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage,
But wise through time, and narrative with age,
In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice,--
A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.
A green old age, unconscious of decays,
That proves the hero born in better days.
Whose well-taught mind the present age surpast.
And wine can of their wits the wise beguile,
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.
The ruins of himself! now worn away
With age, yet still majestic in decay.
Note 9.La vray science et le vray étude de l'homme c'est l'homme (The true science and the true study of man is man).--Charron: De la Sagesse, lib. i. chap. 1.
Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers.--Plato: Phædrus.
Note 47.May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name,
And glorify what else is damn'd to fame.
Richard Savage: Character of Foster.
Note 81.Pope calls this the eighth beatitude (Roscoe's edition of Pope, vol. x. page 184).
Remote from cities liv'd a swain,
Unvex'd with all the cares of gain;
His head was silver'd o'er with age,
And long experience made him sage.
In ev'ry age and clime we see
Two of a trade can never agree.
The schoolboy, with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up.
Who stemm'd the torrent of a downward age.
Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.
The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter,--but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!
An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,
And glides in modest innocence away.
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires, a driv'ler and a show.
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow,--attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."... There was another fine passage too which he struck out: "When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false."
Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.
Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
