Cicero

For can there be anything more absurd than to seek more journey money, the less there remains of the journey?

Yet all these faults are softened both by good character and good education.

Those who have employed it with distinction appear to me to have played the drama of life to its end, and not to have broken down in the last act like unpractised players.

What then are the physical pleasures to be compared with the reward of influence?

Neither white hairs nor wrinkles can at once claim influence in themselves: it is the honourable conduct of earlier days that is rewarded by possessing influence at the last.

From which may be deduced what I once said with universal applause, that it was a wretched old age that had to defend itself by speech.

In fact, old age, especially when it has enjoyed honours, has an influence worth all the pleasures of youth put together.

I will put it briefly: nothing can either furnish necessaries more richly, or present a fairer spectacle, than well-cultivated land.

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.