"Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending"
About this Quote
Anne Bradstreet compresses a whole philosophy of time and virtue into an economic metaphor. Youth is the season of getting: energy runs high, curiosity is wide open, and the chief task is to acquire knowledge, habits, friendships, skills, and a modest store of worldly means. In a Puritan register, getting also includes taking in Scripture and wisdom, building a conscience and a craft that will endure when strength ebbs.
Middle age turns from accumulation to improving. In Bradstreet’s world, to improve meant to put resources to work, to refine what has been gathered and make it fruitful. Estates are ordered, households managed, children instructed, vocations honed, communities served. It is a time for prudence and stewardship, when the raw materials of youth are shaped into character, usefulness, and stability. The word carries a distinctly Puritan sense of cultivation: talents are not buried but increased.
Old age is the season of spending. That does not simply mean exhausting money; it means living out of the capital of body and spirit that has been stored and improved. One spends time, strength, accumulated goodwill, and hard-won wisdom. There is generosity in the term, a readiness to distribute one’s estate, counsel, and affection, and a sober recognition that life is finite and giving is preferable to hoarding. The cadence admits decline without despair: what was gathered and improved earlier now sustains and blesses others.
Composed in the austere context of 17th-century New England, likely in her Meditations Divine and Moral written for her son, the maxim reflects an ethic of stewardship under Providence. It is also practical advice about timing. Misplace the phases and life goes awry: squander youth, and there is little to improve; hoard in old age, and the hoard withers unused. The line commends a humane order to the seasons of a life: gather, cultivate, and finally release.
Middle age turns from accumulation to improving. In Bradstreet’s world, to improve meant to put resources to work, to refine what has been gathered and make it fruitful. Estates are ordered, households managed, children instructed, vocations honed, communities served. It is a time for prudence and stewardship, when the raw materials of youth are shaped into character, usefulness, and stability. The word carries a distinctly Puritan sense of cultivation: talents are not buried but increased.
Old age is the season of spending. That does not simply mean exhausting money; it means living out of the capital of body and spirit that has been stored and improved. One spends time, strength, accumulated goodwill, and hard-won wisdom. There is generosity in the term, a readiness to distribute one’s estate, counsel, and affection, and a sober recognition that life is finite and giving is preferable to hoarding. The cadence admits decline without despair: what was gathered and improved earlier now sustains and blesses others.
Composed in the austere context of 17th-century New England, likely in her Meditations Divine and Moral written for her son, the maxim reflects an ethic of stewardship under Providence. It is also practical advice about timing. Misplace the phases and life goes awry: squander youth, and there is little to improve; hoard in old age, and the hoard withers unused. The line commends a humane order to the seasons of a life: gather, cultivate, and finally release.
Quote Details
| Topic | Aging |
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