Wherever I turn,
I see proof of my age.
I went to my country place and
complained of the maintenance of
the dilapidiated buildings.
My superintendent said the trouble was not
remissions on his part; he had done everything,
but the house was old. That house had taken shape
under my own hands; what is to become of me
if stones that are my contemporaries are
disintegrating?

...... we should welcome old age and love it;
it is full of pleasure if you know how to
use it. Fruit tastes best when its season is ending;
.... it is the last drink which brings the toper delight,
the one that submerges him and polishes off his jag.
Every pleasure saves its most agreeable scene for
the finale. Age is most agreeable on its downward
arc - not when the drop is sheer.  ....

"But it is a bore," you say, "to have death before
your eyes."
In the first place, old and young alike should have
death before their eyes; we are not summoned
in the order of our birth registration.
In the second place, no one is so old that
he cannot legitimately hope for one day more,
and one day is a stage of life.

Life as a whole consists of parts, with larger circles
circumscribed about smaller. ..... the smallest of
all is the day's, but even this goes from beginning
to end, from sunrise to sunset. .... Heraclitus said,
"One day is equal to all. .... Everyday must therefore
be ordered as if it were the last in the series,
as if it filled our measure and closed our life.  .....

Pacuvius used to give himself a mourning dinner,
with wine and the usual funeral meats, and then
he was carried from the dining room to the bedroom
to the clapping of eunuchs who chanted, "His life
has been lived !  His life has been lived !"
Pacuvius gave himself a funeral every single day.

...... as we retire to our beds, we should say
cheerfully and contentedly, "I have lived; I have
finished the course Fortune set me."
If God adds the morrow, we shall accept it gladly.
The man who can look to the morrow without anxiety
is the happiest and has the firmest hold on himself.
The man who says, "My life has been lived,"
receives a windfall with each new day.
.........