Midlife Quotes

“the feeling of stillness after a life of too much motion, such as sailors experience when they walk on dry land after too long at sea, but”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“We can escape the self-destructive cycle of pursuit, resolution, and renewal, of attainments archived or unachieved. The way out is to find sufficient value in atelic activities, activities that have no point of conclusion or limit, ones whose fulfilment lies in the moment of action itself. To draw meaning from such activities is to live in the present - at least in one sense of that loaded phrase - and so to free oneself from the tyranny projects that plateau us around midlife.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“The way in which you relate to the activities that matter most to you is by trying to complete them and so expel them from your life. Your days are devoted to ending, one by one, the activities that give them meaning.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“When the demands of life are pressing, too urgent to be ignored, it would be a mistake to devote all day to contemplation, reading Wordsworth, or playing golf. Being mortal, think of mortal things. Yet if you lose touch with existential value, if you find no place in your life for the activities of the gods - ones that make life worth living to begin with- you risk a midlife crisis not unlike John Stuart Mill's.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“the feeling of stillness after a life of too much motion, such as sailors experience when they walk on dry land after too long at sea,”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“It reflects something wonderful: that there is so much to love and that it is so various that one history could not encompass it all.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“Thus Aristotle quotes the Athenian statesman, Solon, “Call no man happy until he is dead,” and worries”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“level of reported happiness by age had the shape of a gently curving U, starting high in young adulthood and ending higher in old age, with an average nadir at forty-six.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“A new consensus was being formed, a new image of midlife as a time of competence and personal growth, not uncertainty or regression.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“For men, turning forty meant saying goodbye to impossible dreams, taming and rechanneling the ambition of youth. Whatever”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“older adults reported higher levels of positive affect, combined with lower levels of negative affect relative to young and midlife adults.”20”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“stalled career, fading youth, and listless marriage.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“Lo que sea que no funciona en la búsqueda de un objetivo valioso tras otro, no se curará prolongando esa búsqueda para siempre.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Lo que sea que no funciona en la búsqueda de un objetivo valioso tras otro, no se curará prolongando esa búsqueda para”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“A medida que la vida pasa, «tienes cada vez menos que esperar, pero cada vez más que rememorar»”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“«Ahí donde la ignorancia es felicidad/ es una insensatez ser sabio».25”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Un poco de conocimiento es inofensivo; demasiado puede costarle un precio a tu tranquilidad mental.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Cuando tus errores solo te hieren a ti, es más fácil asumir los detalles como una especie de recompensa; resulta mucho más difícil cuando hacen daño a los demás.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Existe una diferencia entre saber que algo es valioso y saber qué lo hace valioso, entre saber que existen razones para el deseo y saber cuáles son esas razones.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“de tomar la decisión cuando sé no solo que se producirán carencias, sino cuáles son exactamente, cuando me veo forzado a enfrentar lo que no haré. Y es ahí cuando duele.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“Lo que vale para los artefactos, vale para los proyectos: su valor no es la dignidad, sino el precio.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“aunque los proyectos nos suponen exigencias —tienes que acabar lo que has empezado—, la mera adopción de un proyecto no aporta razones adicionales para llevarlo a cabo.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“para que la vida valga la pena, tarde o temprano hay que enfrentarse a la posibilidad de sentir un terrible y doloroso arrepentimiento.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“La elección entre valores inconmensurables provoca, de manera potencial, la percepción de un deseo insatisfecho.”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“«es la máxima felicidad del mayor número de personas lo que es la medida de lo bueno y de lo malo».”
― Kieran Setiya, En la mitad de la vida: Una Guía Filosófica (Libros del Asteroide nº 212)

“In philosophers' terms, the shift in perspective is not temporal, but "epistemic": it has to do with knowledge. Emotionally, there is a fundamental difference between knowing that I will miss out on something good and knowing what, knowing that I won't achieve all my ambitions and knowing which.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“The method of proleptic nostalgia: imagine how would you will feel about the face in the mirror, the body you inhabit today, when you look back from ten or twenty years. It could and will become worse.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide

“representations of the midlife crisis precede its naming in 1965, how far can we trace the thing itself? It comes as a surprise to learn that Jaques’s examples are largely drawn not from his clinical practice but from the lives of creative artists. He was struck by the frequency with which the age of thirty-seven, or thereabouts, brings either creative silence or transformation.”
― Kieran Setiya, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide