“The almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home.”
Ecclesiastes, c. 300 BC · Hebrew wisdom literature, on the body in late years
Chapter 3
On the Body's Changes
“Passing away, saith the World, passing away: Chances, beauty and youth sapped day by day.”
Christina Rossetti, 1862 · English poet of the Victorian age
“It is not strength, but weakness; not desire, But its surcease.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1875 · American poet, reckoning honestly with age
“An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing.”
W. B. Yeats, 1928 · Irish poet, writing at sixty
In a study following 660 people for over two decades, those holding positive beliefs about their own aging lived about seven and a half years longer than those who did not.
Becca Levy and colleagues, 2002 · Yale researchers on self-perceptions of aging
“He cannot be said to lack who does not want: my contention is that not to want is the pleasanter thing.”
Cicero, c. 44 BC · Roman statesman on the quieting of appetite
“How comforting it is to have tired out one's appetites, and to have done with them!”
Seneca, c. 65 AD · Stoic philosopher writing to his friend Lucilius
“Great things are accomplished, not by strength, or swiftness, or suppleness of body, but by counsel, influence, deliberate opinion.”
Cicero, c. 44 BC · Roman statesman and philosopher
Quickness and raw processing power peak early and slip away. Vocabulary, verbal reasoning and accumulated knowledge hold or keep growing through the middle years and beyond.
K. Warner Schaie, 1996 · founder of the Seattle Longitudinal Study of adult intelligence
“Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842 · English poet, in the voice of the aged Ulysses
“I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea.”
Walt Whitman, 1881 · American poet, addressing old age directly
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