Quote

life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand, we find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness.

Florida Scott-Maxwell

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Florida Scott-Maxwell
Age: 95 †
Born: 1883
Born: September 14
Died: 1979
Died: March 6
Playwright
Suffragette
Writer
Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell
Law
Heroic
Half
Lesson
Learn
Tragic
Understand
Driven
Find
Lessons
Life
Laws
Mystery
Pierced
Accepting
Helplessness

More quotes by Florida Scott-Maxwell

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The crucial task of old age is balance: keeping just well enough, just brave enough, just gay and interested and starkly honest enough to remain a sentient human being.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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as we age we are more alive than seems likely, convenient, or even bearble. Too often our problem is the fervor of life within us. My dear fellow octogenarians, how are we to carry so much life, and what are we to do with it?
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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To know another, and to be known by another--that is everything.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing old age that it is a time of discovery. If they say Of what? I can only answer We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it wouldn't be discovery.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Order, cleanliness, seemliness make a structure that is half support, half ritual, and - if it does not create it - maintains decency.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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love at any age takes everything you've got.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Admiration is one of the chief delights of living.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Difficulties are what makes it honorable and interesting to be alive.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Difference of opinion has never been sufficiently appreciated. It is the unexpected, the unknowable, the divine irrationality of life that saves us.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Another secret we carry is that though drab outside - wreckage to the eye, mirrors a mortification - inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it wouldn't be discovery.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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I grow more intense as I age.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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What fun it is to generalize in the privacy of a note book. It is as I imagine waltzing on ice might be. A great delicious sweep in one direction, taking you your full strength, and then with no trouble at all, an equally delicious sweep in the opposite direction. My note book does not help me think, but it eases my crabbed heart.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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In very truth the days are almost free, and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty, well -- there are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating . . .
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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My kitchen linoleum is so black and shiny that I waltz while I wait for the kettle to boil. This pleasure is for the old who live alone.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. When at last age has assembled you together, will it not be easy to let it all go, lived, balanced, over?
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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I wonder if living alone makes one more alive. No precious energy goes in disagreement or compromise. No need to augment others, there is just yourself, just truth - a morsel - and you.
Florida Scott-Maxwell