Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.
Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
Where Are They Now? [Gale] (1970)
(Source)
The line in the play -- originally broadcast on BBC Radio 3 -- was based on an answer Stoppard himself gave in an interview by Peter Evans, reprinted in David Bailey and Peter Evans, Goodbye Baby and Amen: A Saraband for the Sixties (1969):
It is a very immature thing to worry about one’s stinking youth, but I don’t care: I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Quotations about:
price
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Old Boys have their Playthings as well as young Ones; the Difference is only in the Price.
Lightly, caressingly, Marie Antoinette picked up the crown as a gift. She was still too young to know that life never gives anything for nothing, and that a price is always exacted for what fate bestows. She did not think she would have to pay a price. She simply accepted the rights of her royal position and performed no duties in exchange. She wanted to combine two things which are, in actual human experience, incompatible; she wanted to reign and at the same time to enjoy.
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, biographer
Marie Antoinette (1932)
(Source)
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 5 (1963)
(Source)
I don’t want to kill anybody. I am passionately opposed to killing, but I’m even more passionately fond of freedom.
Edward Teller (1908-2003) Hungarian-American theoretical physicist
“Fallout and Disarmament: A Debate Between Linus Pauling and Edward Teller,” KQED-TV, San Francisco (20 Feb 1958)
(Source)
“Rich people show their appreciation through favors,” I said. “When everyone you know has more money than they know what to do with, money stops being a useful transactional tool. So instead you offer favors. Deals. Quid pro quos. Things that involve personal involvement rather than money. Because when you’re that rich, your personal time is your limiting factor.”
John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
Lock In (2014)
Freedom is worth paying for.
[La liberté vaut qu’on la paye.]
Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, playwright
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Part 2, ch. 8 “Vigo Bay” (1870)
(Source)
It is but shaping the bribe to the taste, and every one has his price.
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) English writer and printer
A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments (1755)
Someone sends me a clipping from Columnist Lyons with this honey: “They are telling this of Lord Beaverbrook and a visiting Yankee actress. In a game of hypothetical questions, Beaverbrook asked the lady: ‘Would you live with a stranger if he paid you one million pounds?’ She said she would. ‘And if be paid you five pounds?’ The irate lady fumed: ‘Five pounds. What do you think I am?’ Beaverbrook replied: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.'”
Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964) Anglo-Canadian business tycoon, publisher, politician, writer
“As O. O. McIntyre Sees It,” syndicated column (2 Jan 1937)
This anecdote has been attributed to a number of people, including Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw, usually in a bawdier form, e.g.:SHAW: [To a woman seated by him at a dinner party.] Madam, if I gave you a million pounds, would you sleep with me?
WOMAN: I think I would.
SHAW: Would you do it for five?
WOMAN: Sir, what kind of woman do you think I am?
SHAW: I thought we had established that, and were merely haggling over the price.
The above, attributing the exchange to Lord Beaverbrook, is the earliest version found. See here and here for more discussion and research into its origins.
Reality cannot be ignored, except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Religion and Time” (1943)
Reprinted in Christopher Isherwood, Vedanta for Modern Man (1951).
The difference between men and boys
Is the price of their toys.Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) American billionaire
The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm, “Simple Truths” (1978)
Also attributed to Liberace, J. T. Russell, Joyce Brothers, Mark Twain, Doris Rowland, and Dorothy Parker. The phrase can be found in this form in Millard Dale Baughman, Educator's Handbook of Stories, Quotes and Humor (1963), and in 1964 Senate testimony.
For a likely predecessor, see Franklin.
Better be cheated in the price than in the quality of goods.
[Más vale ser engañado en el precio que en la mercadería.]
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 157 (1647) [tr. Jacobs (1892)]
(Source)
(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:
It is better to be deceived in the Price, than in the Commodity.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]
Far better to be cheated in the price, than in the goods.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]
Better to be cheated by the price than by the merchandise.
[tr. Maurer (1992)]
CECIL GRAHAM: What is a cynic?
LORD DARLINGTON: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
“The American Crisis” #4 (12 Sep 1777)
(Source)
VIR: I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?
J. Michael (Joe) Straczynski (b. 1954) American screenwriter, producer, author [a/k/a "JMS"]
Babylon 5, 2×16 “In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum” (10 May 1995)
Cheat me in the Price, but not in the Goods.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #1090 (1732)
(Source)
Don’t expect perfect products unless you are willing to pay for perfection.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Robert Siegmeister
