Cormac McCarthy Quotes

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

All lovely things will have an ending, All lovely things will fade and die; And youth, that's now so bravely spending, Will beg a penny by and by.

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.

The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

A frail gift is beauty, which grows less as time draws on, and is devoured by its own years.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'

Beauty is but a flower, which wrinkles will devour.

There is some suffering that awaits us all.

When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying: And this same flower that smiles to day, Tomorrow will be dying.

But, Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee, It tickleth me aboute myn herte roote. Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote That I have had my world as in my tyme. But age, alias! that al wole envenyme, Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith. Lat go, farewel! the devel go therwith! The flour is goon, ther is namoore to telle; The bren, as I best kan, now most I selle.

Time is the rider that breaks youth.

Have not all past human beings parted, And must not all the present, one day part?

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.

Youth is about the only thing worth having, and that is about the only thing youth has.

Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil - coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes.

You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.

And too soon Marred are those so early Made.

Prettiness dies first.

We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.

Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down, before they knew their endings.

Youth passes like a dream.

The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.

In youth alone, unhappy mortals live; But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive: Discolour'd sickness, anxious labour, come, And age, and death's inexorable doom.