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Remote from cities liv'd a swain,
Unvex'd with all the cares of gain;
His head was silver'd o'er with age,
And long experience made him sage.

— John Gay Fables (1727)

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Age

More quotes by John Gay

Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; and now I know it.

While there is life there's hope, he cried.

Fables (1727)

I must have women—there is nothing unbends the mind like them.

The Beggar's Opera (1728)

The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets.

The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Brother, brother! we are both in the wrong.

The Beggar's Opera (1728)

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All the world's a stage,
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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?"

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

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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)

Attribution

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