Wisdom Wrinkles Quotes

The human heart will never wrinkle.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.

Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age.Nothing does --- except wrinkles.It's true,some wines improves with age.But only if the grapes were good in the first place

The only things that old age comes standard with: grey hair and wrinkles. Wisdom and intellect are earned.

I wear my wrinkles like battle scars, having earned every last one slaying life’s dragons. They boast of my victories and some defeats while their beauty is a wealth of wisdom gained.

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirits back to dust. Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young. When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.

Scars mean you fought. Wrinkles mean you lived. Heartache means you loved.

Life is a zigzag journey, they say, not much straight and easy on the way, but the wrinkles in the map, explorers know, smooth out like magic at the end of where we go.

I'm not opposed to aging - even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I'm proud of my age. I'm proud that I've survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I'll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind...for however long it lasts.

Living around the West Alpha among the High Grades who age exceptionally slowly, one or two wrinkles around the eyes, a few greyed hairs along your ears are enough to call you old. Even if your spine is still strong and straight.

Mastering time isn’t about stopping time, rather, slowing down its effects. Though in the last decade, he has let his dark wavy hair fade and wrinkles grow near his eyes. Even a line or two is visible on his forehead. He sits on a cliff now. His toned torso half-covered in a dark, plain shawl. His chest swells in flawless, mathematical rhythm when he breathes.

I know that’s not a popular notion—don’t we frequently regard our elders as wise partially because they’re gray and wrinkled?—but lately I’ve come to believe that some people are born with the capacity to become wise while others aren’t, and in some people, wisdom seems to be evident even at a young age. My

Human wisdom has advanced to the point where man can construct satellites. And yet man in his wisdom cannot find a way to rescue and old woman in Vietnam from her tragic plight. We can't wait to find out what the pockmarked face of the far side of the moon loks like, but we have no time to consider what meaning those wrinkles of sorrow etched deep into tha face of an old woman may have for us

Gradually, for one reason or another, your body is gonna stop working the way it once did. And as your skin wrinkles and sags, you'll be forced to reckon with what lies underneath it all. And the wisdom you've gained from that inevitable reckoning will always trump the naive glory of your physicality.

The real reason why most old people hate their wrinkles and white hair is because they are still far from being wise.

...life's about accumulating wrinkles, deep as rivers and as wide as is needed to travel along their path, so that by the time you're ready to die, your life can be read.

They have wrinkles, but no wisdom.

Getting older is not an intellectually demanding process.

There is something the child sees that he does not see; something the child hears that he does not hear; and this something is the most important thing of all. Because he does not understand it, his understanding is more childish than the child's and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face, and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling the knots.

Once you have turned eighty, it's important to have the right sort of wrinkles. Even more important, though is to start laughing early enough to spend more time laughing than frowning. If your wrinkles point upward, you will look happy instead of merely old.

To me, the word wisdom means ancient knowledge. It’s the kind of knowledge you not only see but feel when you look into the eyes of an elephant or stop for a moment to marvel at the deep wrinkles on its skin, both of which I believe contain the truths learned from each intentional step their feet and those of their ancestors have placed upon the earth.

These wrinkles are the hands of time, The journeys I’ve been on They’ve seen me through a thousand days, And ev’ry victory won These fragile hands, With exposed bones, Are not a fearful sight But rather, they, my faithful partners, Rocked babies through the night These eyes are weak, They see much less, Than yours they’ve seen much more They’ve guided me through birth, through death, Through grief, through hurt, through war These ears can hear so very little, Yet they’ve learned to listen much They perk up not for gossip now, But for a heart to touch Those younger often look my way, With pity looks to give Yet this old body doesn’t mean I am dying, But rather, that I have lived

V drifts into talking about generations. How grandparents and grandchildren so often get along very well. Remove one generation—twenty-five years at least—and the anger in both directions dissipates. All the failed expectations and betrayals become cleansed by an intervention of time. Resentment and bitter need for retribution fall away. Love becomes the operative emotion. On the old side, you’re left with wrinkled age and whatever fractured, end-of-the-line knowledge might have accrued. Wisdom as exhaustion. And on the other side—which V still remembers with molecular vividness—youth and yearning and urgency for something not yet fully defined. Undiluted hope and desire. But by fusing the best of both sides, a kind of intertwining consciousness arises—grandmother and granddaughter wisdom emerging from shared hope, relieved of emotions tainted by control and guilt and anger. —I’ll assume you’re right, James says. But I wouldn’t know much about long family relationships. When I was

You could defend Ren’s codes. But you didn’t,” Yuan replies. “You wanted an excuse to talk about your source.” “But you said I don’t need defense from Ren Agnello.” Pico uses all its logic. “You said he passes the definitions of ‘friend’ and ‘trustworthy’ and ...” Pico begins a list of keywords. Yuan ignores the keywords. The thin lines on his forehead deepen, the wrinkles near his eyes tighten, and the frown in between his brows grows visible. These days, the word Source is coming frequently, ever since that man asked to meet. Don’t meet him. That monster has an agenda. Ren. Yuan’s CRAB forwards the text to his mind. So, he silences it. Why after two decades? Ren. It smells fishy. Ren. Just because he's a childhood buddy, you'll run to him? Ren. Maybe I didn’t see the Apocalypse with you, but I'm your war comrade, too. Ren. The texts stay unread in his CRAB.

Trying to divert my mind, I look around the tiny living room. The peach of the faded wall reminds me why I hate the colour so much – it reminds me of this home and many other things. I avert my gaze and it lands on the wrinkled brown curtains with a tiny hole at the bottom. I wonder when was it washed last. The sofa set, the centre table, the diwan, everything needs a replacement. Even the memories.

You are the creation of God. You are the beauty of God. There is not one wrinkle, hair, nail, or cell that was not created by the Divine. God is the master architect, sculptor, and admirer of you and of creation Itself. If you look at a wrinkle on your face, that is the Love of God written upon you. The curves, the contours, the space surrounding you, the masterful etching is the deep story of you. Here, there, and everywhere, God knows you, knows Creation.

They have wrinkles, but no wisdom. I took them to war before they could do any of those things that steady a man. They were unmarried when they left. They had no children. They had no years of lean harvest, when they must scrape the bottom of their stores, and no good years either, that they might learn to save. They have not seen their parents grow old and begin to fail. They have not seen them die. I fear I have robbed them not only of their youth but their age as well.

As the years go by, I see my youth slip away And with each passing day, I can't help but to dismay At the choices that I've made and the paths that I've trod And the things that I regret, the mistakes that I've not For with age comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes regret For all the things I could have done, but never quite did yet And all the things I should have said, but held back in fear And all the chances that I missed, year after year But though the wrinkles on my face may tell a different tale I know that it's not too late, for life is not a jail And though I may be getting old, I still have time to start To make new choices, take new paths, and heal a broken heart So here I stand, at the crossroads once again With time and choices stretching out before me like a pen And though the road ahead may be long and winding still I'll make the most of every day, and savor every thrill For I may be getting old, but I am not yet done And though I may have regrets, I'll rise above, and won.

The bare elms, dressed in a white robe of ice crystals, showed the way in an enchanting alley resembling a pathway to an elfin world. Whispering secrets, the snow-draped branches entwined amorously in a wide, cathedral-like canopy. The coarse, dark barks wrinkled with centuries-old wisdom, eyeing the pedestrians in solemn silence. “I’ll just give this pathway another name,” Maude decided. “Whispering Walkway will be its new name because if you listen closely enough, the trees’ rustling sound like a melodious murmur.” “I

People don’t see you when you’re older. People like me and Ella…it’s like we’re invisible. That’s how I feel…invisible.” I looked at him for a moment, looked at the wrinkles on his face, the creases under his eyes, the faint white stubble along his jaw, the ruddiness of his nose, his cheeks. I loved his wrinkles, loved the lines of wisdom on his brow, his forehead. Loved his calloused hands, the healthy red of his skin, the hairs on his head resembling pale-gray toothbrush bristles. “I can’t imagine not seeing you, Grandpa.” A tear slid down his cheek, catching in the corner of his mouth. “You’ll never be invisible to me.

The Leaden Echo How to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away? Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep, Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey? No there ’s none, there ’s none, O no there ’s none, Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair, Do what you may do, what, do what you may, And wisdom is early to despair: Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done To keep at bay Age and age’s evils, hoar hair, Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay; So be beginning, be beginning to despair. O there ’s none; no no no there ’s none: Be beginning to despair, to despair, Despair, despair, despair, despair.

Let me play the fool. With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. And let my liver rather heat with wine Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man whose blood is warm within Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster, Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio— I love thee, and ’tis my love that speaks— There are a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, And do a willful stillness entertain With purpose to be dressed in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, As who should say, “I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!” O my Antonio, I do know of these That therefore only are reputed wise For saying nothing, when I am very sure If they should speak, would almost damn those ears Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools. I’ll tell thee more of this another time. But fish not with this melancholy bait For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.—

I have known its fascination since: I have seen the mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown nations, where a stealthy Nemesis lies in wait, pursues, overtakes so many of the conquering race, who are proud of their wisdom, of their knowledge, of their strength. But for me all the East is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all in that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea—and I was young—and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth!... A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—good-bye!—Night—Good-bye...!” He drank. “Ah! The good old time—the good old time. Youth and the sea. Glamour and the sea! The good, strong sea, the salt, bitter sea, that could whisper to you and roar at you and knock your breath out of you.” He drank again. “By all that’s wonderful, it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself—or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here—you all had something out of life: money, love—whatever one gets on shore—and, tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks—and sometimes a chance to feel your strength—that only—what you all regret?” And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone—has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash—together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.

A foul feeling will wrinkle my nose as fast as a good one will have me sniffing around to find more. - The Malwatch

Age does not bring you wisdom, age brings you wrinkles.

Once there was an old man who took his grandson a walk in the countryside. The old man's face was creased with wrinkles. Like the rings inside an ancient log tree, each signified age and wisdom. The man, to the boys surprise stopped suddenly. He was calm, so calm the boy didn't feel it right to interrupt this moment of solititude. "Listen", the old man said. The boy listened. At first he could hear nothing but his own racing thoughts. "Truly listen", the man said sensing the boys difficulty. So he tried again. He closed his eyes, took a breath and opened them again. "I hear it", he whispered. They both fell silent again and listened to the gentle winds and the birds in the trees, and further a field the beautiful sound of a babbling brook. Then they listened to silence itself. "This my child is real worship." "To Jesus?" "To Jesus.

It’s not just the hair and the outfit that makes her look professional and respectable. It’s not wrinkles or any shit like that. It’s years, wisdom, bad ideas and worse solutions.

children's smiles littered the streets of yesterday, like haunting ghosts wanting to go home, somewhere to belong, the old wrinkled faces were the books of wisdom and reason,

I'm not afraid of getting older. Each wrinkle in my face tells the story of an experience in my life." -Peter Maffay  

We can contemplate the following poem on the sufferings of growing old, written by the scholar Gungtang:     When we are old, our hair becomes white,     But not because we have washed it clean;     It is a sign we shall soon encounter the Lord of Death.     We have wrinkles on our forehead,     But not because we have too much flesh;     It is a warning from the Lord of Death: ‘You are about to die.’     Our teeth fall out,     But not to make room for new ones;     It is a sign we shall soon lose the ability to eat human food.     Our faces are ugly and unpleasant,     But not because we are wearing masks;     It is a sign we have lost the mask of youth.     Our heads shake to and fro,     But not because we are in disagreement;     It is the Lord of Death striking our head with the stick he holds in his right hand.     We walk bent and gazing at the ground,     But not because we are searching for lost needles;     It is a sign we are searching for our lost beauty and memories.     We get up from the ground using all four limbs,     But not because we are imitating animals;     It is a sign our legs are too weak to support our bodies.     We sit down as if we had suddenly fallen,     But not because we are angry;     It is a sign our body has lost its strength.     Our body sways as we walk,     But not because we think we are important;     It is a sign our legs cannot carry our body.     Our hands shake,     But not because they are itching to steal;     It is a sign the Lord of Death’s itchy fingers are stealing our possessions.     We eat very little,     But not because we are miserly;     It is a sign we cannot digest our food.     We wheeze frequently,     But not because we are whispering mantras to the sick;     It is a sign our breathing will soon disappear.

Money is the most beautiful woman in the world; even when old and wrinkled, men are head-over-heals in love with her.

Life can't be rushed. It takes time to develop the wrinkles of wisdom.

Old folks had wisdom etched right there in the space between their wrinkles, and Pat wished the wrinkles themselves could speak.

Wrinkles and gray hair cannot suddenly demand respect. Only when the earlier years of life have been well spent does old age at last gather the fruits of admiration.

The other recruits have been congratulating me, they wish they were in my shoes. But they never studied, never did anything, and you can’t go through life like that and expect it to throw you a bone. They’re all my age, more or less, and they think they still have a chance because that’s what they’ve been told, when self-evidently they have none. For a man, the margin between being drowned and saved is a narrow one, and usually occurs at an age—fourteen, maybe fifteen—when he is unaware of it, has no idea what is at stake, which explains why humanity is little more than an endless parade of the disappointed, of bastards being led to the stocks, living through day after day for no particular reason, watching in disbelief as their experience, I think, is no different from that of the rest of the species—growth and maturity, minor aches, major traumas, the gradual loss of physical faculties, gray hair and wrinkles, lameness, deafness, and ultimately decay and disgust. By eighteen, nineteen, twenty, a man is already irrevocably what he is, his path has already been traced, and he can do nothing to change it. It would be healthier if everyone optimized their lives based on the role assigned to them rather than spending time trying to transform themselves into something they can never become. I’m not saying it’s fair, but that’s how it is. The absurdity of life is not that it comes to an end. That it ends is, actually, less absurd than the preposterousness of it beginning. The absurdity of life is its uneven distribution, I think, the manifest internal imbalance of episodes, the uneven distribution of major events. Before the age of twenty, a transcendental maelstrom is continually bubbling, a stew that never ceases to reverberate, and we cannot digest everything that life serves up to us. There are constantly new signs to interpret, signals and feints flashing past, third and fourth dimensions. At twenty, at precisely twenty, everything is in place. After that, I think, comes a stretch of barren years: the thirties, the forties, the fifties, the sixties. Then, supposedly, man acquires wisdom. I can’t comment, since I haven’t reached that point, but I can’t help but wonder what purpose wisdom serves a man if all that he can do with it is look back on the things he didn’t do before he had that wisdom, and torment himself with all the things he might have done if he’d had it. In the end, the whole thing is a waste, if not of time, then of incidents that, before twenty, come so thick and fast it’s impossible to truly experience them. Honestly, a thousand things have happened to me that I did not truly experience.

How do old people get up? They get up as if they were heaving a stake out of the ground. How do old people walk about? Once they are on their feet they have to walk gingerly, like bird-catchers. How do old people sit down? They crash down like heavy luggage whose harness has snapped. We can contemplate the following poem on the sufferings of growing old, written by the scholar Gungtang: When we are old, our hair becomes white, But not because we have washed it clean; It is a sign we shall soon encounter the Lord of Death. We have wrinkles on our forehead, But not because we have too much flesh; It is a warning from the Lord of Death: ‘You are about to die.’ Our teeth fall out, But not to make room for new ones; It is a sign we shall soon lose the ability to eat human food. Our faces are ugly and unpleasant, But not because we are wearing masks; It is a sign we have lost the mask of youth. Our heads shake to and fro, But not because we are in disagreement; It is the Lord of Death striking our head with the stick he holds in his right hand. We walk bent and gazing at the ground, But not because we are searching for lost needles; It is a sign we are searching for our lost beauty and memories. We get up from the ground using all four limbs, But not because we are imitating animals; It is a sign our legs are too weak to support our body. We sit down as if we had suddenly fallen, But not because we are angry; It is a sign our body has lost its strength. Our body sways as we walk, But not because we think we are important; It is a sign our legs cannot carry our body. Our hands shake, But not because they are itching to steal; It is a sign the Lord of Death’s itchy fingers are stealing our possessions. We eat very little, But not because we are miserly; It is a sign we cannot digest our food. We wheeze frequently, But not because we are whispering mantras to the sick; It is a sign our breathing will soon disappear.

... I still carried the woman on the tip. I once asked the witchman to cut it off, after my uncle forbade it. He looked at me with all his wisdom gone, and nothing left but puzzlement, a wrinkle between his brows, and his eyelids squeezing like a man losing vision. He said, “Do you wish for one eye as well, or maybe one leg?” “It was not the same,” I said. “If the god Oma, who made man, wanted you cut to reveal such flesh he would have revealed it himself," he said.

I am my wrinkled happy skin, A signature I’ve learnt to win. A memory I bring to blue, My depth from what I have been through. From tenderness I’ve gained sweet brush Besides the strings from grieving’s touch. They are the wisdom’s merry page, The richest velvet of my age.

His face started morphing into different people, shapeshifting into wise, old, Indigenous men, as though he’d lived hundreds of lives and I was seeing him as he was in each one of them. I met many different people coming through to help with healing – shamans from centuries before – and I studied creases across their faces, wrinkle lines worn like badges of wisdom, markings of lives lived.

Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting: or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap was of black lace and lutestring ribbon, not one of the butterfly affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh was as clear and joyous as a young girl's. "Yes, I'm a-piecin' quilts again," she said, snipping away at the bits of calico in her lap. "I did say I was done with that sort o' work; but this mornin' I was rummagin' around up in the garret, and I come across this bundle of pieces, and thinks I, 'I reckon it's intended for me to piece one more quilt before I die;' I must 'a' put 'em there thirty years ago and clean forgot 'em, and I've been settin' here all the evenin' cuttin' 'em and thinkin' about old times. "Jest feel o' that," she continued, tossing some scraps into my lap. "There ain't any such caliker nowadays. This ain't your five-cent stuff that fades in the first washin' and wears out in the second. A caliker dress was somethin' worth buyin' and worth makin' up in them days. That blue-flowered piece was a dress I got the spring before Abram died. When I put on mournin' it was as good as new, and I give it to sister Mary. That one with the green ground and white figger was my niece Rebecca's. She wore it for the first time to the County Fair the year I took the premium on my salt-risin' bread and sponge cake. This black-an' white piece Sally Ann Flint give me. I ricollect 'twas in blackberry time, and I'd been out in the big pasture pickin' some for supper, and I stopped in at Sally Ann's for a drink o' water on my way back. She was cuttin' out this dress.

They have wrinkles, but no wisdom.

It's human nature, I think—it's certainly my nature, at any rate—to try to iron all the wrinkles out of life. When we feel like we don't belong, we try to solve the problem by making things a little more uniform, a little more ordinary. We take what we've been told are the best bits of other people's lives and set them as the preconditions for our own satisfaction. We search for home by enforcing someone else's vision of what the word home means. Along the way, we overlook the quirky beauty within the wrinkles, the beauty has always belonged to us and only us. If we want to find our place in the world, we have to let our lives be particular, personal, idiosyncratic. We have to live like we're fearfully and wonderfully made, like we're God's wabi-sabi works of art. How could we possibly belong on someone else's terms when we weren't made to fit in any other body, any other story but our own?

The young were at least smooth-skinned and straight; the old were flabby and wrinkled. At least, he thought, they should pony up some piece of timeless wisdom to make up for their wretchedness: yet most shambled from breakfast to bedtime in the same dumb state that had taken them through adolescence. A fair number had grown up quite simply dimwits, and stubbornly remained so even in their dotage. He wanted to venerate them, for with their lined faces and dignified bearing they reminded him of august men of state. But then they spoke.

Wisdom arrives from experience, collected over many years of living, it accumulates and situates itself in the weathered hands and faces of those who have amassed it over their arduous decades of existence. It presents itself in the wrinkles of a forehead, in droopy cheeks and deep within the iris of smoldering, sunken eyes. Wisdom shows itself in the very thing we fear the most, age.

At the simplest level, memory smooths out the wrinkles of dissonance by enabling the confirmation bias to hum along, selectively causing us to forget discrepant, disconfirming information about beliefs we hold dear. If we were perfectly rational beings, we would try to remember smart, sensible ideas and not bother taxing our minds by remembering foolish ones. But dissonance theory predicts that we will conveniently forget good arguments made by an opponent, just as we forget foolish arguments made by our own side. A silly argument in favor of our own position arouses dissonance because it raises doubts about the wisdom of that position or the intelligence of the people who agree with it. Likewise, a sensible argument by an opponent arouses dissonance because it raises the possibility that the other side, God forbid, may be right or have a point we should take seriously. Because a silly argument on our side and a good argument on the other guy’s side both arouse dissonance, the theory predicts that we will either not learn these arguments well or forget them quickly. And that is just what Edward Jones and Rika Kohler showed in a classic 1958 experiment on attitudes toward desegregation in North Carolina.3 Each side tended to remember the plausible arguments agreeing with their own position and the implausible arguments agreeing with the opposing position; each side forgot the implausible arguments for their view and the plausible arguments for the opposition.

Birthday Wisdom... The Pessimist says, "Oh no, another year, another wrinkle" The Optimist says, "Bring on the wisdom of the Eighties" The Realist says, "I can make this day as HAPPY as I choose!

Natasha feels empty and vaguely rotten inside. To her it is older people who look best. They have wisdom, experience. They have had proper sex. They know how to use make-up. They can go out in the day and buy useful things. They do not have to go to school, and no one tells them what to do. They can flaunt their power. Get fat. Spend whole days alone and naked. They can buy horses and diamonds without having to ask anyone’s permission. They can get piercings and dye their hair. They can talk to people without blushing, without the words cracking halfway through. They know who their parents are at all times. Even wrinkles are attractive to Tash because they talk of real life and age and knowledge. All she wants – what she yearns and yearns for – is knowledge. She doesn’t know anything. Well, nothing useful.

Keeping hold of Larson as if he were a disobedient puppy, Kingston berated him quietly. “After the hours I just spent with you, providing excellent advice, this is the result? You decide to start shooting guests in my club? You, my boy, have been a dismal waste of an evening. Now you’re going to cool your heels in a jail cell, and I’ll decide in the morning what’s to be done with you.” He released Larson to the care of one of the hulking night porters, who ushered him away expediently. Turning to West, the duke surveyed him with a quicksilver glance, and shook his head. “You look as though you’d been pulled backward through a hedgerow. Have you no standards, coming to my club dressed like that? For the wrinkles in your coat alone, I ought to have you thrown into a cell next to Larson’s.” “I tried to have him spruced up,” Severin volunteered, “but he wouldn’t.” “A bit late for sprucing,” Kingston commented, still looking at West. “At this point I would recommend fumigation.” He turned to another night porter. “Escort Mr. Ravenel up to my private apartments, where it seems I’ll be giving counsel to yet another of my daughter’s tormented suitors. This must be a penance for my misspent youth.”` “I don’t want your counsel,” West snapped. “Then you should have gone to someone else’s club.” West sent an accusing glare at Severin, who shrugged slightly. Struggling up from his chair, West growled, “I’m leaving. And if anyone tries to stop me, I’ll knock them flat.” Kingston seemed rather less than impressed. “Ravenel, I’m sure when you’re sober, well-rested and well-nourished, you can give a good account of yourself. At the moment, however, you are none of those things. I have a dozen night porters working here tonight, all of whom have been trained in how to manage unruly patrons. Go upstairs, my lad. You could do worse than to spend a few minutes basking in the sunshine of my accumulated wisdom.” Stepping closer to the porter, the duke gave him a number of quiet instructions, one of them sounding suspiciously like, “Make sure he’s clean before he’s allowed on the furniture.

On a visit to a hospital nursery at the University of Rome during my Assistant to Infancy training, I watched a professora respond to the crying of infants in the following way: first she spoke gently and soothingly to the baby, reassuring him that someone was present. In many cases this was all that was necessary to comfort the child and to stop the crying. However, if this didn't work, the professora made eye contact or laid a hand gently on the child. Often this calmed the infant completely. If not, she checked to see if there was a physical discomfort, a wrinkle of the bedding, a wet diaper, the need to be in a different position. Solving this problem almost always reassured the child and eliminated his need to cry. Only very rarely was a child actually in need of food.

I have a friend, a Catholic priest, who served as Mother Teresa’s translator when she was here in the United States to address the United Nations. I was in his study one day and spied a picture of the two of them standing together on the streets of New York. I marveled again at her ancient, wrinkled, leathered, lined face, utterly unadorned. Wisdom had softened her face; character had drawn its lines. Gazing at those marks of courage and kindness, I thought: Is there anyone more homely—or more beautiful? Hers was the beauty of holiness. May it be ours as well.

Cal shook his head. “Can’t do the no-strings-attached thing—I need emotional lubricant.” Jules wrinkled his nose. “You just turned something sexy like lube into something gross.

Meet Wesley Breaux: Truly seeing him now for the first time since I’d moved home, I was honestly blown away. His golden hair shone in the morning sun but couldn’t completely hide the few strands of silver that were there. His baby face was leaner then it had been but still round with tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Just a couple of inches taller than me at five ten he’d never been overly muscular but instead had a slim, trim build. When he opened his brown eyes, I no longer saw inquisitiveness but the years had given them wisdom. I now understood the presence he presented to the rest of the world. While I would always love the boy I’d known for years, my heart fluttered a bit at the idea of getting to know the man he’d become.