This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Age and time are but timidities of thought." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow." - William Osler, fully Sir William Osler
"Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies." - Thomas Paine
"Old age brings us to know the value of the blessings which we have enjoyed, and it brings us also to a very thankful perception of those which yet remain. Is a man advanced in life? The ease of a single day, the rest of a single night, are gifts which may be subjects of gratitude to God." - William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa
"A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth; instead of its introducing dismal and melancholy prospects of decay, it should give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world." - Thomas W. Palmer
"In youth the days are short and the years are long; in old age the years are short and the days long." - Nikita Ivanovich Panin
"Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under the wrinkles of age; one is lost in them; the other hidden." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn
"Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might just as well be twenty." - Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
"Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state." - Alexander Pope
"He has existed only, not lived, who lacks wisdom in old age." - Publius Syrus
"Man has other enemies more formidable, against which he is not provided with such means of defense: these are the natural infirmities of infancy, old age, and illness of every kind, melancholy proofs of our weakness, of which the two first are common to all animals, and the last belongs chiefly to man in a; state of society." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Wealth consists in talent, not in possessions; greatness, in understanding, not in age." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL
"Happily there exists more than one kind of beauty. There is the beauty of infancy, the beauty of youth, the beauty of maturity, and, believe me, ladies and gentlemen, the beauty of age." - George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
"Time consecrates; and what is gray with age becomes religion." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"By the spirit of the age... the man of today is forced into skepticism about his own thinking, in order to make him receptive to truth which comes to him from authority... Truth taken over by skepticism which has become believing... is not capable of uniting itself with him to the very marrow of his being." - Albert Schweitzer
"If we do not watch, we lose our opportunities; if we do not make haste, we are left behind; our best hours escape us, the worst are come. The purest part of our life runs first, and leaves only the dregs at the bottom; and that time which is good for nothing else we dedicate to virtue, and only propose to begin to live at an age that very few people arrive at." -
"Those things on which philosophy has set its seal are beyond the reach of injury; no age will discard them or lessen their force, each succeeding century will add somewhat to the respect in which they are held; for we look upon what is near us with jealous eyes, but we admire what is further off with less prejudice. The wise man’s life, therefore, includes much; he is not hedged in by the same limits which confine others; he alone is exempt from the laws by which mankind is governed; all ages serve him like a god. If any time be past he recalls it by his memory, if it be present he uses it, if it be future he anticipates it; his life is a long one because he concentrates all times into it." -
"Much of the wisdom of one age is the folly of the next." - Charles Simmons
"The golden age is before us, not behind us." - Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon, aka Duc de Saint-Simon
"The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible." - Sydney Smith
"If the body is only the vehicle by which the soul can access the experience of physical living, then there is no real physical me. The soul (or life force) is the only real me. If you and I (the souls) want to achieve the most from this earthly lifetime, the more varied the experiences we should seek. That said, it’s too easy for you and me to fall into a comfort zone and try to avoid change. To keep this from happening, the experiences change rapidly as a result of the body moving from infancy though old age. The physical changes help to enhance our learning curve, our ability to serve, and our chance to evolve." - Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe
"No place, no company, no age, no person is temptation-free; let no man boast that he was never tempted, let him not be high-minded, but fear, for he may be surprised in that very instant wherein he boasteth that he was never tempted at all." - Ichabod Smith Spencer
"There are only two things a child will share willingly - communicable diseases and his mothers age." - Benjamin Spock, fully Benjamin McLane Spock
"All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
"If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
"Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Under the conditions of our climate, shadow gives light its worth; sternness enhances mildness; solemnity, splendor. Varying proportions of size support and subserve one another." - Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
"All men have poetry in their hearts, and it is necessary for them, as much as possible, to express their feelings. For this they must have a medium, moving and pliant, which can refreshingly become their own, age after age. All great languages undergo change. Those languages which resist the spirit of change are doomed and will never produce great harvests of thought and literature. When forms become fixed, the spirit either weakly accepts its imprisonment or rebels. All revolutions consists of the “within” fighting against invasion from “without”... All great human movements are related to some great idea." -
"Old age brings this one vice to mankind, that we all think too much of money." - Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL
"Common sense is in spite of, not because of age." - Lord Edward Thurlow, First Baron
"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to man." - Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein
"Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization - the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best." - Robert James Turnbull
"Our true age can be determined by the ways in which we allow ourselves to play." - Louis Walsh
"There is no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow." - Edith Wharton
"Not from successful love alone, nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war; but as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm, as gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky, as softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like fresher, balmier air, as days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree, then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all! The brooding and blissful halcyon days!" - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age if it is not esteem, has nothing." -
"There may be enough poetry in the whir of our machines so that our machine age will become immortal." - Owen D. Young
"To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age." - Thomas Bailey Aldrich
"In the atomic age, each individual, each party, each state, must feel itself responsible to humanity in its entirety and not merely to its own group or ideal." - Raymond Aron, fully Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron
"History is the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another." - Jacob Burckhardt, fully Carl Jacob (or Jakob) Christoph Burckhardt