One mellows almost without realizing it—a compensation of age, because anger is exhausting. – Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm, 2014

Growing old is not a gradual decline, but a series of drops, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another below it. But when we pick ourselves up we find our bones are, after all, not broken; while level enough and not unpleasing is the new terrace which lies unexplored before us. – Logan Pearsall Smith, “Age and Death,” Afterthoughts, 1931

My son, we ought to lay up a stock of absurd enthusiasms in our youth, or else we shall reach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we lose a great many on our way. – Victor Cherbuliez, Samuel Brohl and Partner, 1877, translated from French (trans