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AGE, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the enterprise to commit.

— Ambrose Bierce The Cynic's Dictionary (1906)

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Age

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward.

An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.

What I Saw At Shiloh (1881)

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
To get by giving what you lost by gain.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

All Ambrose Bierce quotes →

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All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ambrose Bierce (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.