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Conversation is imperative if gaps are to be filled, and old age, it is the last gap but one.

— Patrick White The Tree of Man (1955)

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Age

More quotes by Patrick White

We must cure ourselves of the habit of war.

Australians in a Nuclear War (1983)

Possibly all art flowers more readily in silence.

The Prodigal Son (1958)

If she had only been able to touch him, they might perhaps have pooled their secrets and discovered the reason for human confusion. But as that wasn't possible, she went outside, into the garden.

The Burnt Ones (1964)

And that is why I am anathema to certain kinds of Australian intellectual. I've lost interest in the theatre because you can't get what you want ever.

Loonies speak their own language, like educated people.

The Tree of Man (1955)

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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)

Attribution

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