No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

The line is spoken by Colonel Cantwell in Ernest Hemingway’s late novel *Across the River and into the Trees* (1950). Cantwell, an aging American officer in post–World War II Venice, is reflecting on age, experience, and the way time changes a person’s relationship to risk. The remark comes in the course of his intimate, often combative conversations—where he resists sentimental ideas about maturity and “earned” wisdom. In the novel’s atmosphere of physical decline and wartime memory, the statement functions as part of Cantwell’s self-diagnosis: he sees older men not as necessarily wiser, but as more guarded, shaped by losses and the narrowing of options.

The line challenges a comforting cultural assumption: that age naturally brings wisdom. Hemingway distinguishes between wisdom—earned insight, clarity, and judgment—and mere caution, a defensive posture shaped by accumulated losses, responsibilities, and fear of risk. The “great fallacy” suggests society romanticizes elders as sages when, in reality, many simply become more conservative in action and opinion. The remark also reflects a modernist skepticism about inherited authority and easy moral lessons. It implies that genuine wisdom requires continued openness and courage, not just survival, and that experience can harden into prudence rather than deepen into understanding.