A Quote by Charles Caleb Colton

The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom. — © Charles Caleb Colton
The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom.
New doctrines ever displease the old. They like to fancy that the world has been losing wisdom, instead of gaining it, since they were young.
In spring a young mans fancy turns to a fancy young man.
I used to quite fancy Russell Brand, but I'm not sure if it's just because he's funny. He's definitely got something and I can't just switch all that off because of one stupid moment. I fancy Barack Obama too, which is a wrong crush, isn't it? He's a married man, and he's quite old, but he looks young, so he's fair game.
Fancy and humour, early and constantly indulged in, may expect an old age overrun with follies.
Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age, but the heart can.
What difference, if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I am. For he who is not, assuredly cannot be mistaken; and therefore I am, if I am mistaken. Therefore because I am if I am mistaken, how am I mistaken that I am, when it is sure that I am, if I am mistaken.
Youth is not entirely a time of life; it is a state of mind. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubts; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.
When an old man and a young man work together, it can make an ugly sight or a pretty one, depending on who's in charge. If the young man's in charge or won't let the old man take over, the young man's brute strength becomes destructive and inefficient, and the old man's intelligence, out of frustration, grows cruel and inefficient. Sometimes the old man forgets that he is old and tries to compete with the young man's strength, and then it's a sad sight. Or the young man forgets that he is young and argues with the old man about how to do the work, and that's a sad sight, too.
Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.
Demographics show that we are entering a battle between young and old. I call it the 'Age War.' The young want to hang onto their money to grow their families, businesses, and wealth. The old want the tax and investment dollars of the young to sustain their old age.
When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements … while remaining heedless of the world’s barbarism. I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.
Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
Though I am alive now, I do not believe an old man's pessimism is nessessarily truer than a young man's optimism simply because it comes after. There are things a young man knows that are true and are not yet in the old man's power to recollect. Spring has its sappy wisdom.
Suicide is what everyone young thinks they'll do before they get old. But they hardly ever get round to it. They just don't want to commit themselves in that way. When you're young and you look ahead, time ends in mist at twenty-five. 'Old won't happen to me', you say. But old does. Oh, old does. Old always gets you in the end.
Always do I recall the parting words uttered by my old governor: "My boy, never . . ." I won't set 'em down. I disregarded them fool-like and paid, and paid; had I a son I'd hand 'em on and ram 'em home. What fools we be when young. We fancy we be wise, forgetting that the old boys have graduated in the 'varsity of the world, the greatest 'varsity of all, and each day we should learn from they.
All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.
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