Seven years

“ I contend that people who made it to seven years old a century ago had a chance more-or-less equal to ours, of surviving past seventy with a greater probability of feeling good in middle-and old age. People have short memories and tend to think that things always were as they are in the present. ”

“ The longer periods of time are usually reckoned not by days, but by weeks, months, or years; if, therefore, as to the question of the duration of the 2300 days, we reduce the days to weeks, months, and years, we shall find six years, three or four months, and some days, and discover that the oppression of the people by the little horn was to continue not fully a period of seven years. ”

“ In Ireland he displayed no very great political ability, but succeeded very happily in pleasing all parties and making himself extremely popular. In 1756 the seven years' war broke out, and all England demanded that Mr. Pitt should be placed at the head of affairs; he absolutely declined to serve under the Duke of Newcastle, who had been prime minister ever since the death of his brother, Henry Pelham, in 1754, and the influence of the great whig families was strong enough to prevent the king from at once making Pitt prime minister. ”

“ God
hath shewed Pharaoh what he is about to do.
01:041:026 The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears
are seven years: the dream is one.
01:041:027 And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine. ”

“ In the world,And so though the growth of man end not perhaps until twenty one, yet is his stature more advanced in the first septenary than in the second, and in the second, more than in the third, and more indeed in the first seven years, than in the fourteen succeeding; for what stature we attain unto at seven years, we do sometimes but double, most times come short of at one and twenty. ”

“ "Oh yes," she said, quickly. "I know all that. But don't talk of it—seven or six years—where may we all be by that time?"
"They will soon glide by, and it will seem an astonishingly short time to look back upon when they are past—much less than to look forward to now." ”

“ What an incredible marvel it is that there are human creatures that slumber threescore and ten years, and look down at the clods and then say, “We are old, we have lived seventy years.” Seventy years! ”

“ And I thank God that he hath permitted me to finish this work, for wit ye that when a man taketh seven years of his life to complete an under{258}taking, he knoweth not whether he shall live to complete that which he hath begun. ”

“ At the third decade life soars grand and high;
But with the fourth its heyday passes by.
The fifth comes on,—a century's half is told;
The sixth,—our little girl is growing old.
Another half-score milestone passed, and then
We've reached the allotted three-score years and ten.
Years may be added; should they come to thee
May Faith and Wisdom their companion be;
Hope thy sure anchor; Peace with thee abide,
And Love still be thy light at eventide. ”

“ WHERE WILL YOU BE A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE?” Young man, just ask yourself the question, “Where shall I be?” Some of you who are getting on in years may be in eternity ten years hence. Where will you be, on the left or the right hand of God? ”

“ The three epochs in our lives are pretty equally divided: that of childhood, owing to the feebler action of the forces, appears to pass away very slowly, and ending at our fifteenth or sixteenth year seems interminable; longer than the time it takes to advance from forty to seventy years of age, and quite as long as to go onwards from fifteen to forty years. ”

“ But, after all, though twenty years seems such a very long time, yet it is not much if you divide it into four spaces of five years. Five years are nothing. They go in a flash. Well, one only has to have four of those flashes and there are twenty years gone—and a baby has grown up to be a man. ”

“ But a time has come when it is necessary to review our past life, and to prepare for that which is to come."
"Ah, sire, you pain me. You are not yet in the prime of your years, and you speak as though old age were upon you. In a score of years from now it may be time for folk to say that age has made a change in your life."
The king winced. ”

“ The ten years from forty to fifty—the best ten years of his life! And if one counted the years before, the silent years of dreams, assimilation, preparation—then call it half a man's life-time: half a man's life-time thrown away! ”

“ But see here, my lad! our bodies are built to last three score and ten years. Some linger to an hundred; but so few beyond, that every month of continued [24] being renders them more and more a sort of prodigies. As the end of a long life approaches—say a life of ninety years—there is such decay, such dry-rot, that the whole frame is but one remove from ashes. ”

“ But on that, with a vividness which the reflection had never assumed before—for the old man, like other old men, did not feel old—he saw that he had but a very short span to live—a year or two, or it might be three or four years. ”

“ Is it to a decade of ten such little years as these now in his hand—ten of his mature years—that men give the dignity of a century? They call it an age; but what if life shows now so small that the word age has lost its gravity? ”

“ You look on your own little adult year, and in imagination enlarge it, because you know it to be the contemporary of his. Even she who is quite old, if she have a vital fancy, may face a strange and great extent of a few years of her life still to come—his years, the years she is to live at his side. ”

“ That is to say, the bound volumes of a decade should represent the development of the keenest sensibility and the clearest thought of ten years. Even a single number should attempt to illustrate, within its limits, the time and the tendencies of the time. ”

“ After three years—it is sometimes longer, sometimes not so long—he finds out that he has given his nerves and his youth and his enthusiasm in exchange for a general fund of miscellaneous knowledge, the opportunity of personal encounter with all the greatest and most remarkable men and events that have risen in those three years, and a great fund of resource and patience. ”

“ I said to my friend that I must live at any cost till seventy years old, perhaps ninety years old or perhaps one hundred twenty years old. It was only yesterday I used to say I must not live to be more than twenty five, better still, not more than twenty years. How beautiful is Life! ”

“ This makes up the three-score years and ten which the Psalmist speaks of as the natural duration of human life. He adds that if by reason of strength, we reach four-score years, yet is that strength but labour and sorrow, and soon cut off. ”

“ We are of opinion, then, that Youth is completed in the forty-fifth year.
And as Adolescence is in the twenty-five years which proceed mounting upwards to Youth: so the descent, that is, Old Age, is an equal amount of time which succeeds to Youth; and thus Old Age terminates in the seventieth year. ”

“ Old age came down the steep of years,
Beneath life's burden bending;
With tottering steps he feebly trod,
And breathing sighs and prayers to God,
He met with youth ascending.
'Ah, whither dost thou bend thy course?'
Said he whose head was hoary---
'I go,' said youth, 'to yonder heighth,
Where through long vistas, glancing bright
Are Honor, Wealth, and Glory. ”

“ There is one fact sitting up like a lighthouse on a rock. I'm twenty-four years older than you. Every five years that we live together from now on will make that difference more important. When you're forty-five—and you'll be just at the top of your powers by then—I shall be one year short of seventy. ”

“ It divides itself very naturally into four periods—of about equal length—twenty to twenty-four years: the period of youth, the period of the prime of life, the period of middle age, and the period of old age. ”

“ He compared twenty months with the life of man. "In life, said he, is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy, or imbecility of age. We are long before we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting. The true period of human existence may be reasonably estimated as forty years, of which I have mused away the four and twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come who can assure me?" ”

“ There is many a five minutes, as they are called when measured by that false scale, that form two-thirds of a lifetime. One fortnight of existence has withered more than twenty years, cast down the barrier between youth and age, and dried up the fountains of the heart, like the simoon. ”

“ Why should we? Actually though the number of my years falls short of eighty, I feel so much older than either of them, that it never occurs to me to think of them as "old," and often as I contemplate their really glowing energetic youth, I grow melancholy for myself, and wonder what has become of my own. ”

“ It is a saddening thought that on this golden age there falls so often the shadow of the crammer. I am thinking of a period of about four years of the child’s life, roughly, in ordinary cases, falling between the ages of eight and twelve or thirteen. ”

“ At your age, ten or twenty years seemed to me almost an endless period of time, but now that I have seen more than eighty years of life the whole journey seems very short, when taking a backward view of the path over which I have travelled. ”

“ To do that rightly, and describe how the Fen came to be, one must go back, it seems to me, to an age before all history; an age which cannot be measured by years or centuries; an age shrouded in mystery, and to be spoken of only in guesses. To assert anything positively concerning that age, or ages, would be to show the rashness of ignorance. ”

“ Why should seventy or eighty years remain as the usual limit of human life? Why should its natural duration under perfectly healthy surrounding conditions not be at least 100 years, with an occasional extension of some ten or fifteen years more? ”

“ Are the years so very plentiful—such a large number assured to you that you can afford to squander a few, to turn them not only to useless purposes but to bad ones. Can you?—the years!—oh is not it wonderful, the way in which thy Lord and my Lord, thy Creator and my Creator, marks out before our eye the progress of the years? ”

“ Hooked toward the old man and the child, marvelling, as before observed, that they wore clothing after the manner of the earth-kin, and bore the appearance of extreme youth and extreme age. "Is it possible that years affect souls? Do we grow old, as well as need garments in the other world?" ”

“ During the days following the Fourth, this impression of death which had entered my mind began to assume more definite limits, and grew pertinent to my own status. I had heard that the average age of man was thirty-three years, and granting that I should reach that age, I could expect to live a little over twenty years more. ”

“ Someone comes in and tells you, "I bring you thirty years of existence; it is the immutable decree of fate; fifteen consecutive years must be happy, and fifteen years unhappy. You are at liberty to choose the half by which you wish to begin." ”

“ Now it takes the human animal twenty years at least to grow to maturity; therefore the human animal really should live five times twenty years, which makes a round hundred or a CENTURY; and I firmly believe it is intended for him to live that long, if he only acted in accordance with the laws of life and health. And, dear uncle, you seem always to have acted so, and therefore I think you may safely calculate upon living out your century and then dying the gentle death of mere old age. ”

“ We know that the world is old, old, and societies also in every form, while the average span of life for the individual is little more than forty years—yet step into the streets and witness the immemorable clangor and newness, the present visible portion of the unbroken thread or pattern that reaches back into eternity. ”

“ What are the moments loaded with passion, intense, and never-dying—years, ages upon earth! Away with the divisions of time, whilst one short breath—the smallest particle or measure of duration, shall outweigh ages. ”

“ In man the sixtieth part is a very venerable age. But as to a planet, as to our little earth, instead of arguing dotage, six thousand years may have scarcely carried her beyond babyhood. Some people think she is cutting her first teeth; some think her in her teens. But, seriously, it is a very interesting problem. Do the sixty centuries of our earth imply youth, maturity, or dotage? ”

“ As the years go on they bring many changes—changes that come as naturally as the seasons—that tend as naturally to anticipated growth and decay—that scarcely startle the subjects of them, till a lengthened-out period of time discloses their vitality and extent. Between the ages of twenty and thirty, ten years do not seem very destructive to life. ”

“ When your understanding comes, you're too old. And then you think, it doesn't pay to begin anew for the few years that are left. But the few years are long. Each year has twelve months; each month, thirty days, and some have even thirty-one; each day, twenty-four hours ”

“ Eighteen.—Why, it is ridiculous! (I really must read some of those Rejected Addresses of yours some day.) —You are very tall for your age, and look very old for eighteen.'
I smiled:
'This fortnight has made me older by five years, I think. Years are no test of age, sir.'
We talked together for almost an hour—of many things. ”

“ I suppose you have seen thirty years. It has been my experience, albeit I’m but fifteen years your senior and not therefore as old as a hill, that no man uproots a habit after he has reached middle age. ”

“ Past experience leads us to expect that some of them will become insane in less than ten years; and all of them, who live, in less than twenty. Many of them will, doubtless, live much longer than twenty years, strong and vigorous in body perhaps, but complete wrecks in mind. ”