That’s what happens when people reach old age. Nobody remembers they’ve been bastards too.
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem – in my opinion – to characterize our age.
Old men love to give good advice to console themselves for not being able to set bad examples.[Les vieillards aiment à donner de bons préceptes, pour se consoler de n’être plus en état de donner de mauvais exemples.]
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
Old age fulfills the dreams of youth. One sees this in Swift: in his youth he built an insane asylum; in his old age he himself entered it.[Alderdommen realiserer Ungdommens Drømme: det seer man paa Swift, han byggede i sin Ungdom en Daarekiste, i sin Alderdom gik han selv i den.]
Nobody over fifty has got any sense.
Nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old.
No one should be alone in their old age.
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don’t know anything at all.
Most fatal diseases had their own specific odor, but that none was as specific as old age.[La mayoría de las enfermedades mortales tenían un olor propio, pero ninguno era tan específico como el de la vejez.]
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life’s parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.
It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him neither joy nor credit.
