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Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored
flower in his button-hole. You can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life
but they would assassinate you. |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
| How stunning are the changes which age
makes in a man while he sleeps! - Letter to William Dean Howells, 22 August 1887 I find no change of consequence in grown people, I do not miss the dead. It does not surprise me to hear that this friend or that friend died at such and such a time, because I fully expected that sort of news. But somehow I had made no calculation on the infants. It never occurred to me that infants grow up...These unexpected changes, from infancy to youth, and from youth to maturity, are by far the most startling things I meet with. - Letter to San Francisco Alta California, 19 May 1867 Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments -- notably
those of the violin -- but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge. Kings clothe a favorite with honors & dignities for a brief time,
then cast him forth naked & ashamed. This imitates Nature, who flatters
us with youth, to insult us with age. I am aware that I am very old now; but I am also aware that I have never
been so young as I am now, in spirit, since I was fourteen and entertained
Jim Wolf with the wasps. I am only able to perceive that I am old by a
mental process; I am altogether unable to feel old in spirit. It is a
pity, too, for my lapses from gravity must surely often be a reproach
to me. When I am in the company of very young people I always feel that
I am one of them, and they probably privately resent it. Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age
of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. |
Composite
photo of Clemens
Clemens
and childhood sweetheart
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It was on the 10th of May, of the present year, that a
brace of curiously contrasted events added themselves to the sum of my
experiences; for on that day I confessed to age by mounting spectacles
for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward
appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher. Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a
hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. |
 AI image created by R. Kent Rasmussen |
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Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. As soon as a man recognizes that he has drifted into age, he gets reminiscent.
He wants to talk and talk; and not about the present or the future, but
about his old times. For there is where the pathos of his life lies --
and the charm of it. The pathos of it is there because it was opulent
with treasures that are gone, and the charm of it is in casting them up
from the musty ledgers and remembering how rich and gracious they were. |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
|
Seventy is old enough. After that there is too much risk. Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John
Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years
ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing
for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder
if a person ever really ceases to feel young -- I mean, for a whole day
at a time. If I had been helping the Almighty when he created man, I would have
had him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How
much better to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of
age in the beginning! I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives
had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good. |
Illustration
by "Dwig" from |
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