See how the world its veterans rewards!
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards.
Pope: Moral Essays.
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.—Bacon: Apothegms.
Dr. Clara Barrus, who for many years has labored in the closest personal contact with John Burroughs, has kindly sent me, along with much other information, the notes he made during the last months of his life for an article that he never lived to complete on Old Age. The quotations and aperçus that he collected and that most impressed him were such as the following:
As men grow old they grow more foolish and more wise.
Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint.
A man at sixteen will prove a child at sixty.
When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.
Nobody loves life like an old man.