Love Quote by Thomas Dekker

Thomas Dekker compresses a worldly truth into a neat simile: the outward signs of age and the outward signs of love both betray themselves. Wrinkles, stooped posture, and a slower step insist on being seen just as surely as flushed cheeks, wandering attention, and unguarded tenderness. The point is less about vanity than inevitability. Certain conditions of life assert themselves, no matter how clever the disguise.

As a dramatist of bustling early modern London, Dekker delighted in detailing how people present themselves and how those presentations fail. His pamphlets and comedies teem with painted faces, elaborate clothing, and social performances meant to project youth, indifference, or superiority. Yet the city he depicts is full of keen observers who read bodies and gestures as if they were texts. Against powders, wigs, and stiff manners, time and desire write in bolder ink. Age lines the face; love loosens the tongue, quickens the pulse, and changes the timbre of speech. Both are experiential forces that move from the inside out and thus become public whether invited or not.

The comparison also carries a gentle irony. Age and love are often subjects of concealment because they expose vulnerability. To be old is to signal finitude; to be in love is to risk rejection or folly. Dekker suggests a practical wisdom: stop pretending the mask holds. Recognition can be kinder than denial. In his theatrical world, truth is not an abstract ideal but a visible effect, something the audience cannot miss.

There is, finally, a carpe diem undertone. If age cannot be hid, time is pressing; if love cannot be hid, confession is already half-made. The line acknowledges a human comedy of efforts to manage appearances while accepting that the most powerful forces in life announce themselves and, once announced, ask to be reckoned with.