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If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose.

— John Cowper Powys The Art of Growing Old (1944)

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More quotes by John Cowper Powys

Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.

The Complex Vision (1920)

The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.

The Pleasures of Literature (1938)

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