← Back to quotes

What is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a… — Socrates

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

What is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman's life, and thirty in a man's?

In the original Greek

ἆρ᾽ οὖν σοι συνδοκεῖ μέτριος χρόνος ἀκμῆς τὰ εἴκοσι ἔτη γυναικί, ἀνδρὶ δὲ τὰ τριάκοντα;

Socrates
Quoted in Republic, by Plato · 375 BC
★ 2.4
Provenance
Current citation
Socrates. Quoted in Republic, written by Plato, translated by Desmond Lee. Penguin Classics, 2007.
Original citation
Socrates. Quoted in Πολιτεία [Republic], written by Plato. c. 375 BCE.

Related quotes

Other quotes that share a subject, a time, or a voice with this one.

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

Other media

Works in other forms that share a subject with this one.

Other media onSubject·Life