Florida Scott-Maxwell Quotes

Life does not accommodate you; it shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. When at last age has assembled you together, will it not be easy to let it all go, lived, balanced, over?

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

...[T]here are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

I admire a contented mind. I revere enjoyment of the simple things. I can imagine that contentment has a high degree of truth. But the human tendency is to take good as normal, and one's natural right, and so no cause for satisfaction and pleasure. This is accompanied by the habit of regarding bad as abnormal and a personal outrage.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

This is what creation is. The might and marvel of forever creating out of opposition.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

It is as though God said, You think to create order? Here is the appropriate disorder, since they are one.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Difficulties are what makes it honorable and interesting to be alive.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Is there any stab as deep as wondering where and how much you failed those you loved?

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

No matter how old a mother is she still watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble but [we do know] it is our sacred duty.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience almost beyond our capacity at times but something to be carried high.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

You need to claim the events in your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done which may take some time you are fierce with reality.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

The crucial task of old age is balance: keeping just well enough, just brave enough, just gay and interested and starkly honest enough to remain a sentient human being.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

My kitchen linoleum is so black and shiny that I waltz while I wait for the kettle to boil. This pleasure is for the old who live alone.

~ Florida Scott-Maxwell