What sort of charge against old age is the nearness of death, when this is shared by youth? Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so. Well, the young man is a fool to expect it. For what can be more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false as true? An old man has nothing even to hope. ' Ah, but it is just there that he is in a better position than the young man, since what the latter only hopes he has obtained: The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long. And yet! what is 'long' in a man's life? For grant the utmost limit: let us expect an age like that of the king of the Tartessi, who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty. Nothing seems long in which there is any. last' , for when that arrives, then all the past has slipped away -only that remains which you have earned by virtue and righteous actions. Hours indeed, and days and months and years depart, nor does past time ever return, nor can the future be known. Whatever time each is granted for life, with that he is bound to be content. A.C. Grayling
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  1. Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.

  2. It takes a certain ingenuous faith - but I have it - to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.

  3. The best of what we are lies in what we hope to be

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  5. Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.

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