“I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a full-grown man.”
What this quote means
This quote, from an adventure tale, presents a character who has always been an adult, without childhood or aging. It evokes immortality and the enigma of identity. This resonates because it questions our relationship with time and memory. It makes us reflect on what defines our existence: our memories, our experiences. It invites us to accept the mystery of life and to embrace our own story, even if it is full of the unknown. It reminds us that every life is unique and precious.
How to apply it daily
Take a moment to write your own story, noting the key moments that have made you the person you are today.
Continue
Related quotes
Same author or same theme — keep reading.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”Create visual
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”Create visual
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”Create visual
“The only demand I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.”Create visual
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”Create visual
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!”Create visual
More quotes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.”Create visual
“I was born in the city of Baltimore about the middle of the year 1875. My father was a well-to-do citizen of that city, and my mother was a very beautiful woman. I was an only child.”Create visual