middle-age quotes

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.8,'Of Marriage and the Single Life'.

In the youth of a state arms do flourish; in the middle age of a state, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a state, mechanical arts and merchandise.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.58,'Of  Vicissitude of  Things'.

The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.

- Doris originally Doris Kappelhoff Day
Quoted in  A E Hotchner Doris Day (1978).

Nature is as wasteful of promising young men as she is of fish-spawn. It's not just getting them killed in wars: mere middle age snuffs out ten times more talent than ever wars and sudden death do.

- Richard Arthur Warren Hughes
The Fox in the Attic, bk.1, ch.18.

One of the pleasures of middle age isto find out that one right, and that one was much righter than one knew at say17 or 23.

- Ezra Loomis Pound
WAS1934  TheABC of Reading, ch.1.

I have the reputation of having read all of Henry James, which would argue a misspent youth and middle age.

-James Grover Thurber
Recalled on his death, 2 Nov1961.