A Quote by May Sarton

[In old age] there is a childlike innocence, often, that has nothing to do with the childishness of senility. The moments become precious . . .

May Sarton

Quote Topics

Age Become Childishness Childlike Innocence Moments Nothing Often Old Old Age Precious Senility

Quote Author

May Sarton
American - Novelist
May 3, 1912 - July 16, 1995

I would not say that old men grow wise, for men never grow wise; and many old men retain a very attractive childishness and cheerful innocence. Elderly people are often much more romantic than younger people, and sometimes even more adventurous, having begun to realize how many things they do not know.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Novelists don't age as quickly as philosophers, who often face professional senility in their late twenties.

Martin Amis

The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of their neighbour's wives! The innocence of Ford, the innocence of Rockefeller! The nineteenth century was the Age of Innocence--that sort of innocence. With the result that we're now almost ready to say that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making love.

Aldous Huxley

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

There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.

Henry Ford

There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child's perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence.

Michael Chabon

It was at this moment that I wrote my first important paper in theoretical physics. I was 32 years old, 5 years beyond the alleged age of senility for theorists.

Robert B. Laughlin

As you get older, your experiences become more precious. Nothing material is important to me. It's people who are precious.

Michael Bolton

When you're old enough to write a book for children, by then you'll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you're an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.

Roald Dahl

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. I fear the disease is incurable.

John Steinbeck

...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.

George MacDonald

Constant travel brings old age upon a man; a horse becomes old by being constantly tied up; lack of sexual contact with her husband brings old age upon a woman; and garments become old through being left in the sun.

Chanakya

I know these will become old stories someday and our pictures will become old photographs and we'll all become somebody's Mom or Dad, but right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening and I'm here.