"Judges don't age; time decorates them"
About this Quote
There is a sly little power move in Bagnold's line: it denies judges the ordinary human arc of decline and instead recasts time as their stylist. "Judges don't age" isn’t biology; it’s mythmaking. The sentence borrows the calm authority of a legal verdict and turns it into cultural propaganda, the sort institutions love because it sounds like wisdom while flattering the robe.
"Time decorates them" does the real work. "Decorates" suggests medals, patina, the dignified wear on old leather - aesthetic proof of endurance. It’s not that judges escape time; it’s that the public is trained to read their years as legitimacy. Wrinkles become credentials. Slowness becomes deliberation. Even fatigue can pass for gravitas. Bagnold compresses the whole performance of judicial authority into an image you can see: an older judge looks more like "a judge" because we’ve decided that age, in certain costumes, counts as virtue.
The subtext is both admiration and warning. Admiration, because the line understands the comfort society takes in a bench that appears seasoned, unruffled, above fashion. Warning, because "decoration" is surface. Time doesn’t necessarily improve judgment; it can just make power look more natural, less contestable. In a century when institutions were marketed through ceremony and deference, Bagnold nails how the judiciary converts mere duration into moral capital - and how easily we confuse the look of authority for the substance of it.
"Time decorates them" does the real work. "Decorates" suggests medals, patina, the dignified wear on old leather - aesthetic proof of endurance. It’s not that judges escape time; it’s that the public is trained to read their years as legitimacy. Wrinkles become credentials. Slowness becomes deliberation. Even fatigue can pass for gravitas. Bagnold compresses the whole performance of judicial authority into an image you can see: an older judge looks more like "a judge" because we’ve decided that age, in certain costumes, counts as virtue.
The subtext is both admiration and warning. Admiration, because the line understands the comfort society takes in a bench that appears seasoned, unruffled, above fashion. Warning, because "decoration" is surface. Time doesn’t necessarily improve judgment; it can just make power look more natural, less contestable. In a century when institutions were marketed through ceremony and deference, Bagnold nails how the judiciary converts mere duration into moral capital - and how easily we confuse the look of authority for the substance of it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Aging |
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