Historical voices

Could such a high spirit fail to make old age pleasant?

These are not hindered by any extent of old age, and seem to me to approach nearest to the ideal wise man's life.

What pleasures are there in feasts, games, or mistresses comparable to pleasures such as these?

Indeed, if it has in store any of what I may call the food of study and philosophy, nothing can be pleasanter than an old age of leisure.

Why, what blessings are these--that the soul, having served its time, so to speak, in the campaigns of desire and ambition, rivalry and hatred, and all the passions, should live in its own thoughts, and, as the expression goes, should…

For nothing gives you uneasiness which you do not miss.

I am thankful to old age, which has increased my avidity for conversation, while it has removed that for eating and drinking.

Nor was I, in fact, ever wont to measure my enjoyment even of these banquets by the physical pleasures they gave more than by the gathering and conversation of friends.

Why, because, far from being a charge against old age, that it does not much feel the want of any pleasures, it is its highest praise.

For pleasure hinders thought, is a foe to reason, and, so to speak, blinds the eyes of the mind.

It is to show you that, if we were unable to scorn pleasure by the aid of reason and philosophy, we ought to have been very grateful to old age for depriving us of all inclination for that which it was wrong to do.

Therefore nothing can be so execrable and so fatal as pleasure; since, when more than ordinarily violent and lasting, it darkens all the light of the soul.

For when appetite is our master, there is no place for self-control; nor where pleasure reigns supreme can virtue hold its ground.

What a splendid service does old age render, if it takes from us the greatest blot of youth!

For a man who is always living in the midst of these studies and labours does not perceive when old age creeps upon him.

These are the exercises of the intellect, these the training grounds of the mind: while I sweat and labour on these I don't much feel the loss of bodily strength.

The man who aims at this may possibly become old in body--in mind he never will.

For as I admire a young man who has something of the old man in him, so do I an old one who has something of a young man.

The fact is that old age is respectable just as long as it asserts itself, maintains its proper rights, and is not enslaved to any one.

For he kept his mind at full stretch like a bow, and never gave in to old age by growing slack.

Young men are more frequently wanton and dissolute than old men; but yet, as it is not all young men that are so, but the bad set among them, even so senile folly--usually called imbecility--applies to old men of unsound character, not to…

For they are like lamps: unless you feed them with oil, they too go out from old age.

Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more.

We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength.