A Quote by Joseph Joubert

Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.

Joseph Joubert

Quote Topics

Age Intelligent Intelligent Man Man Old Old Age Only Qualities Useless Wisdom

Quote Author

Joseph Joubert
French - Writer
May 7, 1754 - May 4, 1824

Old age takes from the man of intellect no qualities save those that are useless to wisdom.

Joseph Joubert

And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolations that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything; that only a fool can become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent nineteenth-century man must be, is morally bound to be, an essentially characterless creature; and a man of character, a man of action - an essentially limited creature. This is my conviction at the age of forty. I am forty now, and forty years - why, it is all of a lifetime, it is the deepest of old age. Living past forty is indecent, vulgar, immoral!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.

Giacomo Leopardi

Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.

Karl Marx

Old age is an ordeal, of flesh and mind. Of winding down, of slowing down, of dying cells. It's accepting the loss of physical attractiveness and replacing it with the power and wisdom that can only come with old age.

Colleen McCullough

Let your old age be childlike, and your childhood like old age; that is, so that neither may your wisdom be with pride, nor your humility without wisdom.

Saint Augustine

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

Leonardo da Vinci

Indulgence in frivolous speech not only reveals one's lack of moral character, but it deprives him of good qualities also.

Thiruvalluvar

Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.

Giacomo Leopardi

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.

Sam Keen

Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.

Abigail Van Buren

Old age takes in part savoury wisdom for its food - see to that your old age will not lack in nourishment.

Leonardo da Vinci

I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.

Robertson Davies

The universe exists under a reign of eternal law, surpassing the imperfect laws of human government. Such orderliness, such domination by law, imply intelligent planning and purpose. Nothing happens of itself. Nowhere, in the age-old experience of man, has continued order been found except as the product of intelligent direction.