"Temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use"
About this Quote
Aging is supposed to sand down our rough edges; Irving slices that comforting myth in half. His line works because it flips the usual moral arc of time. We like to imagine years as a quiet tutor, turning hot temper into wisdom. Irving insists the opposite can happen: habits of anger and biting speech don’t “season,” they set. The phrasing has the cool, deadpan sting of a writer who’s watched people outsource responsibility to the calendar.
The subtext is less about biology than about practice. Temper is framed as a muscle memory; the “sharp tongue” becomes a tool you hone through repetition. There’s a bleakly funny precision in calling it an “edged tool”: speech is not just expression but an instrument that can cut, damage, and control. Constant use doesn’t merely reveal character, it manufactures it. If you rehearse cruelty, you get better at cruelty.
Context matters. Irving is writing in a culture that prized civility, manners, and social restraint, especially in the early American republic’s aspirational public sphere. A “sharp tongue” wasn’t only personal vice; it was social sabotage, a way to puncture reputations in a small world where gossip traveled faster than facts. His warning lands as both etiquette and ethics: don’t expect age to redeem what you refuse to discipline.
It’s also a subtle jab at the romance of the curmudgeon. The cranky elder isn’t “telling it like it is”; he’s simply become proficient at being cutting.
The subtext is less about biology than about practice. Temper is framed as a muscle memory; the “sharp tongue” becomes a tool you hone through repetition. There’s a bleakly funny precision in calling it an “edged tool”: speech is not just expression but an instrument that can cut, damage, and control. Constant use doesn’t merely reveal character, it manufactures it. If you rehearse cruelty, you get better at cruelty.
Context matters. Irving is writing in a culture that prized civility, manners, and social restraint, especially in the early American republic’s aspirational public sphere. A “sharp tongue” wasn’t only personal vice; it was social sabotage, a way to puncture reputations in a small world where gossip traveled faster than facts. His warning lands as both etiquette and ethics: don’t expect age to redeem what you refuse to discipline.
It’s also a subtle jab at the romance of the curmudgeon. The cranky elder isn’t “telling it like it is”; he’s simply become proficient at being cutting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anger |
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