Lydia M. Child Quotes

Any attempts at autobiography before the age of eighty seem pretty self-involved to me. There are a lot of smart middle aged people but not many wise ones.

In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.

The older I get, the more I feel.

One wouldn't want to have the same dilemmas at 50 as one had at 15. And indeed I don't. I have a very different take on life.

I learned from my past.

You may think me crude, and probably I am crude, but I am not so crude as I was, for I am clever enough to see that the girl of nineteen who thought herself a genius was only an unusual girl writing her heart out.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements (as well as one's deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity.

I think I've become more modest as the years have gone on.

I lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system.

So, do I think I'm missing something? I really don't, and I think that comes with age.

The older you get the more you understand what you're doing.

I'm beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

When you get to be a 45-year-old man, you start to realize: 'I know who I am, and I know who I'm not. I know my shortcomings, I know my strengths; maybe some of my shortcomings are my strengths.' You start to face yourself as you truly are.

I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older.

When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Wisdom begins at the end.

Granted, I've changed internally as I've gotten older - I take it easy, I know when to stop and take care of myself, I laugh much more and with my belly and soul - but this comes from the confidence and acceptance that comes with maturity.

I think I can see more clearly now - about how the pattern of past experiences has shaped who I am and the characters I have played - and I'm grateful for that.

I used to just write about my own apathy, but that youthful, apathetic way of looking at things grew thin as I got older.

I think I've got wiser.

I think you just learn so much about yourself over the years.

I've become a lot wiser over the years.

Life is a massive amount of feelings with the occasional profound engagement with intellect. As I get older, I hope the intellect takes over.