Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Mary Catherine Bateson

Quote by Mary Catherine Bateson

Work

Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom

Browse quotes and source details for this work. 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

“For one month in 2018, I conducted a thought experiment. Everywhere I went, I imagined the people I saw without hair dye or implants or comb-overs. The more I looked, the more I found - after all, men's first gray hairs generally appear at thirty, and women get their first, on average, by thirty-five. People from all ethnic groups. People who looked rich and people who looked poor. People who were adults, middle-aged, senior, old, elderly, and aged. Everywhere I looked (including in the mirror), I saw people pretending to be something other than what they were. How can it be that we have created a society where a majority of adults and elders feel ashamed of their basic identity? And if we are pretending to be something we are not, how can we be surprised or disappointed when others disparage what we are?”

AgeAging
Author:Louise Aronson
Create image