Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect. Few know how to remain silent and respect the silence of others.

Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.

Old man! 'Tis not difficult to die.

Look on me! there is an order
Of mortals on the earth, who do become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age,
Without the violence of warlike death;
Some perishing of pleasure — some of study — Some worn with toil — some of mere weariness — Some of disease — and some insanity — And some of withered, or of broken hearts

An average man doesn’t do this, though. The world is never a mystery for him, and when he arrives at old age he is convinced he has nothing more to live for. An old man has not exhausted the world. He has exhausted only what people do. But in his stupid confusion he believes that the world has no more mysteries for him. What a wretched price to pay for our shields!

Old Men’s Souls Within their ancient, decrepit bodies
the souls of old men wallow.
Poor things, so full of sorrow:
how bored with the wretched life they bear,
yet how they cherish it and how they fear
its loss, these contrary and befuddled
souls, tragicomically huddled
inside their ancient, desiccated hides.

Most men die at twenty or thirty; thereafter they are only reflections of themselves: for the rest of their lives they are aping themselves, repeating from day to day more and more mechanically and affectedly what they said and did and thought and loved when they were alive.

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

But old age, to begin with, has something in common with death. Some face it with indifference, not because they have more courage than others, but because they have less imagination.

Every man dies. Not every man lives.

Young men's minds are always changeable, but when an old man is concerned in a matter, he looks both before and after.

Of all the wonders that I have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
(Act II, Scene 2)