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At fifteen my mind was set on learning. At thirty my character had been formed. At forty… — Confucius

Philosophical literature

At fifteen my mind was set on learning. At thirty my character had been formed. At forty I had no more perplexities. At fifty I knew the Mandate of Heaven. At sixty I was at ease with whatever I heard. At seventy I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing moral principles.

Confucius
Analects · 221 BC
★ 4.0
Other tags relating to this quote
Topic
Stages of life
Genre
Philosophical literature
Time
221 BCAncient World
Person
Confucius
Provenance
Current citation
Confucius. The Analects, edited and translated by Annping Chin. Penguin Classics, 2014.
Original citation
Confucius. 論語 [The Analects]. c. 479 BCE.

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Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so fast. When you're a teenager, you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you'll have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two o'clock in the afternoon, you have lunch around ten, breakfast the night before, you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate soft yogurt and muttering, "how come the kids don't call? How come the kids don't call?" The eighties, you'll have a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?

Mitch Robbins
City Slickers · 1991
Another quote aboutTopic·Stages of life