Meaning & Analysis
As a person gets older, their other sinful desires or vices (like lust or gluttony) tend to weaken with age, but the desire for wealth and possessions (covetousness) paradoxically becomes stronger.
Insights
The Insatiability of Greed
Covetousness is depicted as a uniquely persistent and insatiable human failing. Unlike physical appetites that diminish over time, the desire for wealth has no natural limit and can grow more intense with age, becoming the final and most enduring temptation.
The Shifting Vices of Age
The proverb illustrates a shift in human motivation throughout the lifecycle. Vices associated with youth and physical vitality are replaced in old age by a desire for security, control, and legacy, all of which are symbolized by the accumulation of wealth.
Anxiety and Mortality
The intensification of greed in later life can be interpreted as a psychological defense against the anxieties of mortality. Wealth creates an illusion of control, power, and permanence in the face of physical decline, dependency, and death.
Psychology of Aging
The proverb offers a cynical psychological portrait of aging, suggesting that as physical passions and youthful ambitions fade, the abstract desire for accumulation becomes a primary motivator, perhaps as a way to compensate for other losses and anxieties about mortality.
Religious and Moral Context
Rooted in Christian theology, where avarice is a deadly sin, the proverb reflects a long-standing moral view of greed as a spiritual poison that, unlike sins of the flesh, intensifies as one approaches death, tightening its grip when other temptations have faded.
Literary Archetype
This concept is a powerful literary archetype, embodied by figures like Ebenezer Scrooge or Molière's Harpagon. These characters serve as cautionary tales, illustrating how greed can consume a person in their later years, eclipsing all other human feelings and relationships.
Rhetorical Devices
Personification
The proverb gives human qualities to abstract concepts, with 'sins' that 'grow old' and 'covetousness' that 'grows young', creating a vivid image of a lifelong battle between different vices.
Antithesis and Paradox
The central power of the proverb lies in the stark contrast between 'grow old' and 'grows young'. This paradoxical statement is memorable and effectively highlights the uniquely perverse and enduring nature of greed.
Juxtaposition
By placing 'all sins' in opposition to the specific vice of 'covetousness', the proverb grammatically and thematically isolates and elevates greed as the ultimate, most resilient human failing.
Transcription
Quotations
Covetousness is a vice appropriated . . to old men, according to this old saying: . . When all vices wax old, covetousness alone waxeth young.
When many sinnes are waxen olde, Then Couetousnesse will seeme most yonge.
The loue of wealth continues yong when all sinnes else grow old.
When all sinnes else be old is auarice young.
(is young).
(growes younger).
When all sins are old, covetousness is still youthfull.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.