Quotes & Sayings About Age And Friends

The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining. — Edward Hoagland

She'd noticed before how middle-aged women were obsessed with the topic of age, always laughing about it, moaning about it, going on and on about it, as if the process of aging were a tricky puzzle they were trying to solve. Why were they so mystified by it? Jane's mother's friends seemed to literally have no other topic of conversation, or they didn't when they spoke to Jane. "Oh, you're so young and beautiful, Jane." (When she clearly wasn't; it was like they thought one followed the other: If you were young, you were automatically beautiful!) "Oh, you're so young, Jane, you'll be able to fix my phone/computer/camera." (When in fact a lot of her mother's friends were more technologically savvy than Jane.) "Oh, you're so young, Jane, you have so much energy." (When she was so tired, so very, very tired.) "And — Liane Moriarty

The dissonance that I felt daily flew in the face of what Silicon Valley says about itself: that it is a meritocracy, that it values intelligence and creativity, that everyone has a fair shot if they just work hard enough. This was true only if you were technical, and even that may not always be enough: in the age of the social network, who you know and who your friends were was becoming increasingly important. — Katherine Losse

Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has ever seen. — Vladimir Nabokov

I see, in women friends, a really dangerous phenomenon where it seems they reach a certain age and become invisible. — Sarah Ruhl

She hadn't planned on getting laid tonight but then she hadn't planned on missing her home and her friends and being thnis down and, frankly, this bored on her special day. She was so relieved to see a guy her own age it was worth a thank-you-for-walking-into-this-bar-fuck alone. — Amy Andrews

I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of five, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book. — Philip Reeve

I know we're still getting to know each other. But I also know you're a smart girl. I hate that you learned this lesson at all, much less that you did it at your age. But please, Tab, learn it. You can have family that makes you safe. You can have friends who'll take your back. But the most important person and the one who'll have the best shot at keeping you safe is you. — Kristen Ashley

People do. But, Daddy, it's not right. I didn't know you even cared for Addie Moore. Or even knew her that well. You're right. I didn't. But that's the main point of this being a good time. Getting to know somebody well at this age. And finding out you like her and discovering you're not just all dried up after all. It just seems embarrassing. To whom? It's not to me. But people know about you. Of course they do. And I don't give a damn. Who told you? It must've been one of your tightass friends in town here. It was Linda Rogers. She would. Well, she thought I should know. And now you do. — Kent Haruf

I have always had plenty of friends, and now at age sixty, I face four walls as a common prisoner. — Albert Kesselring

Conversely, younger people, in particular those born in the 1970s and 1980s, have already experienced (to a certain extent) the important role that inheritance will once again play in their lives and the lives of their relatives and friends. For this group, for example, whether or not a child receives gifts from parents can have a major impact in deciding who will own property and who will not, at what age, and how extensive that property will be - in any case, to a much greater extent than in the previous generation. Inheritance is playing a larger part in their lives, careers, and individual and family choices than it did with the baby boomers. — Thomas Piketty

I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, living off parents, friends or the State And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine. I didn't want to work in a place where I couldn't wear my fur coat. — Hanif Kureishi

They howled again, and Loghain raise his voice even further. 'Your prince is not here! But when he returns to us, we shall hand to him his stolen throne! Here at the River Dane is where the Dragon Age begins, my friends! Today they will hear us roar! — David Gaider

As though on a seedling whose blossoms ripen at different times, I had seen in old ladies, on that beach at Balbec, the dried-up seeds and sagging tubers that my girl-friends would become. But, now that it was time for buds to blossom, what did that matter? — Marcel Proust

Having never fancied herself in love before, her regard had all the warmth of first attachment, and from her age and disposition, greater steadiness than first attachments often boast; and so fervently did she value his remembrance, and prefer him to every other man, that all her good sense, and all her attention to the feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the indulgence of those regrets, which must have been injurious to her own health and their tranquility. — Jane Austen

I'm a pretty big dork. It's crazy. I'm one of those people who grew up with all kinds of musicals, but I was right at that age where 'Rent' was a big deal for me and for my friends. — Anna Kendrick

Tamani was suddenly struck by just how young David looked. He forgot, sometimes, that David, Laurel, and their friends were younger, in some ways much younger, than Tamani. He was posing as a school-age human, but in truth he was an officer in the Guard. He knew his place, he knew his role, with a certainty some humans never achieved. The amount of freedom human children had must be paralyzing. No wonder they took so long to become adults. — Aprilynne Pike

Senescence begins
And middle-age ends
The day your descendants
Outnumber your friends — Ogden Nash

Few of us have been so exceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own age, some experienced friend who has helped us by precious counsel, never to be forgotten. We cannot render it in kind, but perhaps in the fulness of time it may become our noblest duty to aid another as we have ourselves been aided, and to transmit to him an invaluable treasure, the tradition of the intellectual life. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

IT SEEMS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am. — Daniel Silva

It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity. — Alexis De Tocqueville

When I was a kid, a lot of my parents' friends were in the music business. In the late '60s and early '70s - all the way through the '70s, actually - a lot of the bands that were around had kids at a very young age. So they were all working on that concept way early on. And I figured if they can do it, I could do it, too. — Slash

Whereas the disparity between Henry and me is permanent?" She tucked her chin, regarding him in bemusement. "I never meant to suggest any such thing." Did Phillip feel inferior in some way to his elder brother? She could not credit it. He flicked a playful finger under her chin. "I should hope not. I always rather thought you preferred me to Henry." Emma's nerves crackled to life. She took a long breath and told herself to stop imagining references to that cursed letter. She swallowed and answered diplomatically, "You and I, being so close in age, naturally became friends. Henry and I did not." He gave her a crooked grin and tweaked her chin once more. "That's what I like to hear. — Julie Klassen

Relentlessly, I read on: Number one: Make at least two friends your own age. Number two: Go places besides your room. Number three: Get boyfriend. Number four: Make sure Mom and Dad notice numbers one through three. — Anne Eliot

Are your friends as good as MY friends? I can discern the nod of of assent but doubt it. My own friends are far better, they are famous people and they are all dead.
Who, you may ask, are those friends of mine, and why are they dead?
It is a fair question. They are dead because, had they lived, they would have died anyway from extreme old age and decrepitude. — Flann O'Brien

You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned. — Judith Viorst

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone; - but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For — Arthur Schopenhauer

What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine. — Thomas Moore

The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank. — Erica Sehyun Song

The inclusiveness of the Drama League luncheon is one of the most exciting things about it. I get to see old friends and meet new friends. Of course I can't tell who anybody is if they're under the age of 75. So my old friends become my new friends. — James Earl Jones

Yessir, some things is sin 'cause God says so. Some things is sin 'cause they hurt other people. And some things is just pure-dee stupid. — David Hopper

All of my friends are my age and we are all ageing at the same time. We talk about it and moan, but it doesn't bother me. — Claudia Schiffer

Certain very old people reach an age where every funeral becomes some sort of insane confirmation of strength, rather than of vulnerability, as it is when we are in our thirties or forties and our friends die. — Erica Jong

It was becoming more and more evident that Salem was a town that celebrated individuality, a real live-and-let-live kind of place. Melody felt a gut punch of regret. Her old nose would have fit in here.
"Look!" She pointed at the multicolored car whizzing by. Its black door were from a Mercedes coupe, the white hood from a BMW; the silver trunk was Jaguar, the red convertible top was Lexus, the whitewall tires were Bentley, the sound system was Bose, and the music was classical. A hood ornament from each model dangled from the rear view mirror. Its license plate appropriately read MUTT.
"That car looks like a moving Benton ad."
"Or a pileup on Rodeo drive." Candace snapped a picture with her iPhone and e-mailed to her friends back home. They responded instantly with a shot of what they were doing. It must have involved the mall because Candace picked up her pace and began asking anyone under the age of fifty where the cool people hung out. — Lisi Harrison

I've dealt with losing close ones before, and I've been around friends that have lost friends at a young age. I think it's important to think about - not necessarily death, but about life and think about where you're going and how you want to be remembered and the legacy you want to leave. — Scotty McCreery

I surfed competitively from age 13 to 18. Every day, before and after school. I wanted to surf for the rest of my life. It's what all my friends did - I even had it as a subject in school for a number of years. — Liam Hemsworth

The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone. — Nicolas Chamfort

One of the survival mechanisms of children raised in alcoholic families is an awareness of parental needs and feelings and of changes in parental moods and behavior. The Adult Child often makes a full-time occupation of mind reading with partners, friends, employers, and therapists. As a consequence, they earn a Ph.D. at the age of six in observing the behavior of others and assessing parental needs - but are in elementary school at age thirty, trying to learn to assess, label, or communicate their own needs and feelings. — Jane Middelton-Moz

Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every individual, however original he may be, is still a child of God, of his age, of his nation, of his family and friends. Only thus is he truly himself. If in all this relativity he tries to be the absolute, then he becomes ridiculous. — Soren Kierkegaard

I would injure no man, and should provoke no resentment. I would relieve every distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would choose my friends among the wise and my wife among the virtuous, and therefore should be in no danger from treachery or unkindness. My children should by my care be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what their childhood had received. — Samuel Johnson

My little hobby. Book Collecting. And yet, old friends, books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when we are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive. -Bulldog — Corrie Ten Boom

I think, at the end of the day, age is just a number. It's like, in real life, I've got friends who are dating someone their age or dating someone who's twice their age, and they're equally in love. — Margot Robbie

If you age with somebody, you go through so many roles - you're lovers, friends, enemies, colleagues, strangers; you're brother and sister. That's what intimacy is, if you're with your soulmate. — Cate Blanchett

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distress. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence of what has been said before. Between the workman and the master there are frequent relations, but no real association.
I am of the opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The Information Age is, first and foremost, an education age, in which education must start at birth and continue throughout a lifetime. Last year, from this podium, I said that education has to be our highest priority. I have something to say to every family listening to us tonight: Your children can go on to college ... Because of the things that have been done, we can make college as universal in the 21st century as high school is today. And, my friends, that will change the face and future of America. — William J. Clinton

A few years ago I lost one of my dearest friends. He died at age 53 - heart attack. David is gone, but he was one of my very special friends. I used to say of David that if I was stuck in a foreign jail somewhere accused unduly and if they would allow me one phone call, I would call David. Why? He would come and get me. That's a friend. Somebody who would come and get you. — Jim Rohn

...Nyla was right in predicting that, for me, life would go on into old age and my promise has been kept too, for every now and then over the years, the ghosts have slipped out from the past and I have kept brief company with my friends of long ago. — Edward Beauclerk Maurice

I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be. — Roland Merullo

I feel very blessed that at a young age I was able to navigate my battle with drug and alcohol addiction, and through recovery live a sober life. There is such a stigma attached to addiction and it was hard for me to both confront and overcome it. I am very proud and grateful that with the support of family and friends, I was able to do so. — Cara Santana

I was kind of a weird kid in high school. I didn't have many friends in my age group because all they wanted to do was fight and have riots. — Keith Stanfield

When I was nine, I was singing western swing: Roy Rogers and Patsy Cline. It got me noticed because no one my age was doing it, but it made me feel inferior because none of my friends could relate to it. — Kacey Musgraves

It is not easy to watch the world change around you. To see an entire way of life change and change and change again. It isn't easy to watch friends grown old and die, nor is it easy to be constantly moving on from place to place before people begin to wonder why you never age. — Michael Scott

Instead, I practiced different forms of reading. The possibilities offered by books are legion. The solitary relationship of a reader with his or her books breaks into dozens of further relationships: with friends upon whom we urge the books we like, with booksellers (the few who have survived in the Age of Supermarkets) who suggest new titles, with strangers for whom we might compile an anthology. As we read and reread over the years, these activities multiply and echo one another. A book we loved in our youth is suddenly recalled by someone to whom it was long ago recommended, the reissue of a book we thought forgotten makes it again new to our eyes, a story read in one context becomes a different story under a different cover. Books enjoy this modest kind of immortality. — Alberto Manguel

It had never mattered to her very much, reputation. For one who was often described as odd and strange, having little in common with others her age or gender, reputation never seemed worth much. It did not buy her friends, or invitations, or respect. So — Sarah MacLean

Look at a person's friends, and you can tell a lot about how secure a person is. Insecure people only get close to people to whom they feel superior in terms of looks, age, education, position, or financial status. Insecure people feel that they must have some kind of edge on others so that others will look up to them as a superior rather than looking at them as an equal eyeball to eyeball. Some people will not get close to you unless they can advise you, boss you, or run your business. Some people will dislike you and will feel threatened by you if in their shallow opinion you look as good as they do, know as much as they do, or speak, sing, cook, or dress as well as they can. — William D. Watley

Ang [Lee] gave us a lot of books about cowboys who had been gay or stories about it and all that stuff. And I just talked to a lot of my friends - who [was] their first, particularly same-sex, first situation. That was fascinating to me - trying to learn what that was in a certain period of time. Certain age. The secrecy involved in it. All those things. — Jake Gyllenhaal

There is only one problem: You do not trust your powers. There is no difference between you and God. Count your blessings. Be proud of yourself. Make your children, friends and neighbors proud of you. Let your touch be the Master's Touch. Serve the Age of Aquarius. Keep up and God will keep you up. Trust it. Stop looking down at yourself. Feel God within. There is no God outside of you. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

O my friends!- to be queer was very bliss. The fifties was the last great age of queerdom. All the talk now is of freedom and pride (pride!), but there young hotheads in their pink bell-bottoms, clamouring for the right to do it in the streets if they feel like it, do not seem to appreciate, or at least seem to wish to deny, the aphrodisiac properties of secrecy and fear — John Banville

At other times, he wondered whether it was the world that had lost its color, or his friends themselves. When had everyone become so alike? Too often, it seemed that the last time people were so interesting had been college; grad school ... What had happened? Age, he guessed. And with it: Jobs. Money. Children. The things to forestall death, the things to ensure one's relevance, the things to comfort and provide context and content. The march forward, one dictated by biology and convention, that not even the most irreverent mind could withstand. But those were his peers. What he really wanted to know was when his friends had become so conventional, and why he hadn't noticed earlier. — Hanya Yanagihara

Going to regular public high school and working and auditioning was really, really tough. I never really fit in and hit the stride that all the other kids were on. Instead of going out and hanging out with my friends at that age, I remember being in my bedroom and putting on like a Christina Aguilera tape and just like belting. And seeing if I could hit every single note just like her. — Naya Rivera

And what do you do in the face of this powerlessness? As a parent?"

"You get to be obsessed and angry," Tom said. "And they get to be the age they are, and act like teenagers if they want to. There is a zero-percent chance you will change them. So we breathe in, and out, talk to friends, as needed. We show up, wear clean underwear, say hello to strangers. We plant bulbs, and pick up litter, knowing there will be more in twenty minutes. We pray that we might cooperate with any flicker of light we can find in the world. — Anne Lamott

Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of 'medicine.' That's something you might remind your New Age friends who've gone gaga over 'holistic medicine' and 'alternative Chinese cures. — Anthony Bourdain

They call it Second Lifetime Syndrome, and it happens when a sorcerer watches her family and friends age and die around her. - China — Derek Landy

'Stand By Me' was really great for me and my buddies; we'd all watch that together because that was us - we were down in the creek and hanging out every day and going on little adventures. I had about sixteen friends who are all about the same age as me and lived in a three-block radius. We spent our entire childhood down in that creek. — Scoot McNairy

Death, torture and prison are part of daily life for the youth of Iran. They are not like us, my friends and I at their age; they are not scared. They are not what we were. They hold hands and scream: 'Don't be afraid! Don't be afraid! We are together!' They understand that no one will give them their rights; they must go get them. — Marjane Satrapi

As a first-generation Ethiopian immigrant, Sheba had lived in Charleston since she turned five years of age. She was Ethiopian by birth, but American by preference. She had worked hard, studied and sacrificed plenty to get where she was today, no easy feat for someone who had just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday. According to her friends, Sheba was a beauty, though when she looked in the mirror, she saw inevitable flaws; her cheekbones were too pronounced, her mouth a little too wide, her nose with that perturbing slant to it. Still, she accepted compliments gratefully, especially from her roommate, Janelle. Janelle was the true beauty, Sheba thought, with dark ebony skin so smooth that she could be a walking ad for Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate. — Joanna Hynes

Been brainwashed since age 2
I only had imaginary friends
And still do
And they hate you — Mac Lethal

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it has given me me . It has provided time and experience and failures and triumphs and time-tested friends who have helped me step into the shape that was waiting for me. I fit into me now. I have an organic life, finally, not necessarily the one people imagined for me, or tried to get me to have. I have the life I longed for. I have become the woman I hardly dared imagine I would be. — Anne Lamott

I think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to. — Abbas Kiarostami

Everybody dies. There's nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God. (Although there's no question a belief in God would come in handy. It would be great to think there's a plan, and that everything happens for a reason. I don't happen to believe that. And every time one of my friends says to me, "Everything happens for a reason," I would like to smack her.) — Nora Ephron

I started coming up to New York at age 17. There was a girl I met over the summer somewhere; I was chasing her. I would drive up to D.C., where I had made some friends, which was about four hours away, and we would take the bus up to New York. — Garth Risk Hallberg

I went to something like six different schools before the age of 12, so I was always the new girl and had to make friends quickly. It was difficult at the start because I was very bookish - I was literally sat in the corner reading books, with no friends. — Isla Fisher

Cousins are people that are ready made friends, you have laughs with them and remember good times from a young age, you have fights with them but you always know you love each other, they are a better thing than brothers and sisters and friends cause there all pieced together as one. — Courteney Cox

I'm at the age when my friends have started having kids, and when my first good friend had a baby, the first time I picked up her daughter I spoke in French. I didn't even think about it. It just came out. Maybe it's because it's my mother tongue? — Jessica Pare

Even in the Stone Age, the rules for how to win friends and influence people were likely the same as today's: Cooperate when your neighbor needs shelter, share your dinner even if you're still hungry, and think twice before saying "That loincloth makes you look fat." In other words, a little self-control, please. — Kelly McGonigal

I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always use to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn't kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. — Ray Bradbury

I've had friends whose boyfriends I meet, then they break up and I end up staying buddies with the boyfriend. In this day and age with social media and Facebook, Twitter, it's really impossible to escape people that you've been involved with. In a weird way, it makes it easier for everyone to stay friends because you're just sort of stuck there. — Zachary Knighton

The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was. — Lin Yutang

The friends of evangelical doctrine, and the advocates of orthodoxy, have the following objects to keep ever in view in this age; they must take care of their Bibles, that they be not mutilated or curtailed by lawless criticism; they must take care of their theology, that it be not perverted by false philosophy; and they must take care of their pulpits, that they be not occupied by heretical, unspiritual, or incompetent ministers. — John Angell James

Being lonely as a kid might well have been necessary for me," I told audiences in my talks. "If I'd had the friends I dreamt of, I'd never have spent the time to become the machine aficionado I am today. Now that I'm grown I can put that in perspective. The world is full of friendly people with no technical skills. The few of us who see into machines like others see into humans are singularly uncommon, and we're valued for that. If we use a technology like TMS to help a lonely teen today, will we be taking that exceptional ability away from him tomorrow? Should we trade friends in seventh grade for designing a working spaceship at age twenty-five? — John Elder Robison

Consider what a child misses during the 15, 000 hours (from birth to age seventeen) he spends in front of the TV screen. He is not working in the garage with his father, or in the garden with his mother. He is not doing homework, or reading, or collecting stamps. He is not cleaning his room, washing the supper dishes, or cutting the lawn. He is not listening to a discussion about community politics among his parents and their friends. He is not playing baseball or going fishing, or painting pictures. Exactly what does television offer that is so valuable it can replace these activities that transform an impulsive, self-absorbed child into a critically thinking adult? — Paul Copperman

I started bands at a pretty young age and played with my friends back in Detroit. I've always known that I wanted to do this. It was all I was ever interested in doing. I never had, outside of music, any extracurricular activities that I took part in. — Alex Winston

The information age has off-loaded a great deal of the work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us. We are doing the jobs of ten different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. It's no wonder that sometimes one memory gets confounded with another, leading us to show up in the right place but on the wrong day, or to forget something as simple as where we last put our glasses or the remote. — Daniel J. Levitin

It was really hard coming to terms with the Nazi history. Then in my twenties I was traveling to Germany. There was a lot of poetry activity and some of my first readings abroad and trying to relate with people my own age there and what they were discovering and learning had to examine in terms of their backgrounds. Then so many of my friends had family who had either perished in the holocaust or survived in the holocaust. It was very palpable. — Anne Waldman

Maybe I'm getting to the age when I'm starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now. You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot - both on the Right and the Left. — Clint Eastwood

This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet. — Anna Akhmatova

You are well aware that it is not numbers or strength that bring the victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them. I have noticed this point too, my friends, that in soldiering the people whose one aim is to keep alive usually find a wretched and dishonorable death, while the people who, realizing that death is the common lot of all men, make it their endeavour to die with honour, somehow seem more often to reach old age and to have a happier life when they are alive. These are facts which you too should realize (our situation demands it) and should show that you yourselves are brave men and should call on the rest to do likewise. — Xenophon

Truth provides the most diplomatic answer): I don't believe I've ever attended one since I was your age where I didn't feel, beforehand, an oppressive dread at the isolation that can reign in a large enough group of even the most intimate friends, much less an admixture of intimates, acquaintances, and strangers. Still, so much of my social education has been effected in such gatherings, so many true friendships have had their beginnings in meetings much like yours and mine, that I feel these affairs must not only be endured, but negotiated with a certain energy, if not commitment. — Samuel R. Delany

I sort of feel like it comes around again. That when you get to a certain age, when you've lived enough and you've got your friends to support you and your family to support you, you wake up one morning and think, yeah, I'm okay. — Anna Quindlen

Age simply doesn't enter into it! The older the friend, the more he is valued, particularly when he shows so visibly the characteristics that we all look for in friends. You have only to look at a genuine teddy's face to see at once the loyalty, common sense, and above all, dependability behind it. — Peter Bull

Well to me growing, up I've had my own psychological war with my parents dying at such a young age. My mother was killed by a drunk driver, then two months later my father drowned. He was out with his friends drinking and on medication for depression, and he didn't come out of the water alive. Growing up with sexual abuse and having to be in gangs and dealing with my own trauma; finding the cultural identity when I was 16, and learning those traditional ways saved me from hurting myself. — Adam Beach

It wasn't until I left that I realised it's not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn't. — Chance The Rapper

People automatically assume and expect that every moment and every bit of personal data should be broadcasted on social media, especially as it relates to them - and thats just not cuttin' it for me. If you can make it through the age of social media and come out with the same friends and lover, kudos! — Aeriel Miranda

God created us all to be part of His body. We function together. Fellowship is a precious gift the Lord gives His children. To neglect fellowship or refuse to draw near those who can make our journey all that it should be is to make ourselves vulnerable to compromise. Anytime we withdraw from wise friends who will hold us accountable, we seek our own desires. We become resistant to "all sound wisdom" (Prov. 18:1) - and that is a precarious place to be. If we are committed to travel toward the heart of God, then we need to move toward the wise friend, of any age, who can help us stay on the journey. Cynthia Heald, A Woman's Journey to the Heart of God — Beth Moore

Past middle age, some friends suggested that I should have my eyebags removed, the deepening creases on my face stretched. I often examined my face in the mirror, imagining how I'd look if I followed the suggestion. I decided to retain the old mug. I was too familiar and comfortable with it. And the final hindrance: the cost. — F. Sionil Jose

Testimony in new age writing affirms the way in which embracing a love ethic transforms life for the good. Yet a lot of this information only reaches those of us who have class privilege. And often, individuals whose lives are rich in spiritual and material well-being, who have diverse friends from all walks of life who nurture their personal integrity, tell the rest of the world these things are impossible to come by. I am talking here about the many prophets of doom who tell us that racism will never end, sexism is here to stay the rich will never share their resources. We would all be surprised if we could enter their lives for a day. Much of what they are telling us cannot be had, they have. But in keeping with a capitalist-based notion of well-being, they really believe there is not enough to go around, that the good life can only be had by a few. — Bell Hooks

Science and religion ... are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there's a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don't agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if people in this so-called 'scientific age' knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they'd find it easier to share my views. — John Polkinghorne

At about the age of ten, my friends and I discovered the joys of sitting in graveyards drinking merrydown cider and kissing and stealing our elder siblings' records. — Beth Orton

Dear Earth-dweller: Please use your BRAIN! As anyone KNOWS in this SCIENTIFIC age, the origin of the races is now WELL UNDERSTOOD! Africans traveled here after the DELUGE from Mercury, Asians from Venus, Caucasians from Mars, and the people of the Pacific islands from assorted asteroids. If you don't have the NECESSARY OCCULT SKILLS to project rays from the continents to the ASTRAL PLANE to verify this, a simple analysis of TEMPERAMENT and APPEARANCE should make this obvious even to YOU! But please don't put WORDS into MY mouth! Just because we're all from different PLANETS doesn't mean we can't still be FRIENDS. — Greg Egan