Malcolm Bradbury Quotes

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.

When people are old enough to know better they are old enough to do worse.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.

The young have strength; the old, knowledge

What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom.”

When virtue is pictured as innocence and innocence equated with childlikeness, the implication is obviously that knowledge and experience are no longer media of goodness, but have become in themselves contaminating. This is a very despairing outlook, in its way as black as Augustine's original sin, for it supposes that original goodness will in all likelihood be defiled...It surrenders the attempt to represent virtue in a mature phase.

Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.

Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Youth is wasted on the young.

The passions of the young are vices in the old.

The old idea that you grow wiser as you get older, and you learn from your elders, is actually completely wrong.

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

It has been said that there is no fool like an old fool, except a young fool. But the young fool has first to grow up to be an old fool to realize what a damn fool he was when he was a young fool.

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

I don't know why it is, but sometimes I feel like I'm 60. It's like I've been around for a long time. I felt that way even when I was 8.

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.

People often yearn back to more innocent times, but more and more, as I get older, I find myself hankering after more jaded days.

But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment.

Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone.

When you've lived as long I've lived, you see things from a bigger lens, and you try to share that with the young guys coming up, including being patient.