The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made!
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me.
Browning: Rabbi Ben Ezra.
What is age but youth’s full bloom
And retiring, more transcendent youth?
Old men must die or the world would grow mouldy, would
only breed the past again.—Tennyson: Becket.
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.—Disraeli: Coningsby.