Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Mary Catherine Bateson

Quote by Mary Catherine Bateson

“Since few people arrive at retirement with an understanding that this transition will involve a rethinking of who they are, an interim pattern has emerged, in which travel offers a way of fulfilling deferred daydreams of adventure while the next stage takes shape. [p. 31]”

Quote by Mary Catherine Bateson

Book:Composing a Life
Create image

Work

Composing a Life

This book explores the complexities of life and the journey towards self-actualization, offering insights into the human experience and the search for meaning. more

Author

Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson

Mary Catherine Bateson is an American writer renowned for her research on culture, society, and anthropology. Born on December 8, 1939, she is the daughter of Claude L. Bateson, a prominent sociologist. Her work often explores complex social phenomena, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches and creative thinking. more

You May Also Like

“The great fact all the while however had been the incalculability; since he had supposed himself, from decade to decade, to be allowing, and in the most liberal and intelligent manner, for brilliancy of change. He actually saw that he *had* allowed for nothing; he missed what he would have been sure of finding, he found what he would never have imagined. Proportions and values were upside-down; the ugly things he had expected, the ugly things of his far away youth, when he had too promptly waked up to a sense of the ugly--these uncanny phenomena placed him rather, as it happened, under the charm; whereas the 'swagger' things, the modern, the monstrous, the famous things, those he had more particularly, like thousands of ingenuous enquirers every year, come over to see, were exactly his sources of dismay. They were as so many set traps for displeasure, above all for reaction, of which his restless tread was constantly pressing the spring. It was interesting, doubtless, the whole show, but it would have been too disconcerting hadn't a certain finer truth saved the situation. He had distinctly not, in this steadier light, come over *all* for the monstrosities; he had come, not only in the last analysis but quite on the face of the act, under an impulse with which they had nothing to do. ("The Jolly Corner")”

AgeModernYouthPerceptionDismayDispleasure
Book:Henry James: Complete Stories 1892–1898
Create image

“I’d pretty well come to the point- the age you might say- when a man knows what he’s losing with every hour that passes. But he hasn't yet built up the wisdom to pull up sharp on the road of time. And anyway, even if you did stop, you wouldn't know what to do without the frenzy for going forward that possesses you and has won your admiration ever since you were young. Even now, you're not as pleased with your youth as you once were. But you don’t yet dare admit that youth may be nothing more than a hurry to grow old.”

TruthAgeYouthVanity
Book:Journey to the End of the Night
Create image