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The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.
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“The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.”

Oscar Wilde

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Source
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young
Date
1894
Meaning

Meaning of “The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything:…”

The epigram compresses three stereotypes of certainty into one balanced joke, mocking credulity, suspicion, and youthful overconfidence at once.

Source context

Where does it come from?

“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,” first published in The Chameleon in 1894.

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DeepFunnyLifeLife AdviceLife LessonsMindShortThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTruthWisdom Quotes About Judgment & Living WellDoubtKnowledgeMaturityWisdom About Life
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I am not young enough to know everything.
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“I am not young enough to know everything.”

J. M. Barrie · The Admirable Crichton · 1902
Meaning & context

Barrie reverses the cliché that age brings complete wisdom, making youthful certainty—not age—the comic claim to omniscience.

Source details

The Admirable Crichton, Act I, Project Gutenberg #3490. Ernest Woolley repeatedly delivers “I am not young enough to know everything” as a self-consciously clever epigram while Agatha, Treherne and the others struggle to understand it; Crichton later says he has no idea what Ernest meant. It remains fictional comic dialogue rather than J. M. Barrie autobiography or a factual claim about age and knowledge.

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Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
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“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”

E. M. Forster · A Room with a View · 1908
Meaning & context

Forster’s narrator contrasts the clarity of describing another person’s life from outside with the confusion of recognizing one’s own desires while actually living them.

Source details

A Room with a View, Chapter XIV, Project Gutenberg #2641. The frozen catalog wording is a clause extract from the narrator’s longer sentence: “Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome ‘nerves’ or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.” The passage concerns Lucy Honeychurch’s self-deception in fiction, not modern psychological evidence.

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It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
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“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

Arthur Conan Doyle · A Scandal in Bohemia · 1891
Meaning & context

Holmes argues that explanations should follow evidence because an early theory can tempt a person to force later facts into a preferred story.

Source details

“A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891), Project Gutenberg #1661. Holmes immediately warns that premature theorizing leads people to twist facts to suit theories; it is fictional detective dialogue.

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Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
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“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

John Stuart Mill · Autobiography · 1873
Meaning & context

The aphoristic warning concerns excessive self-monitoring: repeatedly testing an experience for happiness can interrupt the very absorption that makes enjoyment possible.

Source details

Autobiography, Chapter V; Mill states this within his post-crisis philosophy of pursuing ends beyond happiness itself.

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Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.
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“Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.”

John Stuart Mill · Autobiography · 1873
Meaning & context

Mill’s mature view is that happiness is often an indirect result of sustained attention to worthwhile people, work, art, or purposes beyond constant self-measurement.

Source details

Autobiography, Chapter V; this sentence concludes Mill’s reflection that happiness is better approached indirectly than made the sole object of scrutiny.

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