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"You must be very old, Sir Giles,"
I said; he said: "Yea, very old:"
Whereat the mournfullest of smiles
Creased his dry skin with many a fold.

— William Morris The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems (1858)

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Age

More quotes by William Morris

Wert thou more fickle than the restless sea,
Still should I love thee, knowing thee for such.

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?

The Earthly Paradise (1868)

If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

Mastership hath many shifts whereby it striveth to keep itself alive in the world.

A Dream of John Ball (1886)

It is for him that is lonely or in prison to dream of fellowship, but for him that is of a fellowship to do and not to dream.

A Dream of John Ball (1886)

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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: William Morris (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.