A Quote by Alain de Botton
After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
Related Quotes
I rememeber one time we were getting ready to go to South America and everything was packed up and in the car ready to go and I hid and I was crying because I really did not want to go, I wanted to play. I did not want to go.
I taught world history. I understand there was an Ice Age... seasons come and seasons go. I do not believe the world's going to end because of the 2 percent man-made greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. And even if it were, we're not going to stop it.
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
Old age learns about less after a lifetime of more.
Our immediate interests are after all of but small moment. It is what we do for the future, what we add to the sum of man's knowledge, that counts most. As someone has said, 'The individual withers and the world is more and more.' Man dies at 70, 80, or 90, or at some earlier age, but through his power of physical reproduction, and with the means that he has to transmit the results of effort to those who come after him, he may be said to be immortal.
It is not enough to be ready to go where duty calls. A man should stand around where he can hear the call!
It is easy to say that there are the rich and the poor, and so something should be done. But in history, there are always the rich and the poor. If the poor were not as poor, we would still call them the poor. I mean, whoever has less can be called the poor. You will always have the 10% that have less and the 10% that have the most.
I think you often say more by saying less. And interestingly enough, I mean, Jesus really set the standard. I mean, he could say more with fewer words than anybody. Most of the parables were less than 250 words. And, boy, did he have some one-liners just packed with truth.
For man to go from less than 1% haves to 40%, living at high standard - despite decreasing resources - cannot be explained by anything other than by doing more than less.
There is a built-in danger in old age which, if we give in to it, makes aging one of the most difficult periods of life, rather than one of the most satisfying - which it should be. Tye danger of old age is that we may start acting old.
For works of the mind really great there is no old age, no decrepitude. It is inconceivable that a time should come when Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, should not ring in the ears of civilized man.
I don't mind being older. I'm proud of my age. I've achieved a lot. It's the same thing with Mick and the Stones. They should be revered and respected. Isn't it strange that now we're living longer we have so much less respect for old age? Perhaps it's a less valuable commodity?
A little more kindness, A little less speed, A little more giving, A little less greed, A little more smile, A little less frown, A little less kicking, A man while he's down, A little more "We", A little less "I", A little more laugh, A little less cry, A little more flowers, On the pathway of life, And fewer on graves, At the end of the strife.
Yet man does recognise himself [as an animal]. But I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history, I certainly know of none... If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science.
For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most
remote from it?
To a large extent, the aged in our society are ghettoized. Old people are seen as useless, bypassed by history, old-fashioned, in the way. So, not surprisingly, when we reach the official mark of old age, we're supposed to go gently into that good night, to get off center stage and hand over the spotlight. Old age is also surrounded by shame - the myth of impotence and inability.
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