The Oxford Book of Ages

For each age of the persons life, the editors Anthony and Sally Sampson have gathered significant quotations.They have chosen from a variety of excellent sources .Their work has an excellent introduction in which they reflect on the whole course of life's ages. Most often their entries are not simply token significations of the age involved but rather real reflections of what the person felt at that particular age of their life. Some examples from the Age Sixty- two. " I nevwer wake without finding life more insignificant than it was the day before. .. My great misery is recollecting the scene of twenty years past, and then all on a sudden dropping into the present. " Swift " I am spending delightful afternoons in my graden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older I feel everything departing , and I love everything with more passion." Zola " No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year." Cicero "We are a pair of old derelicts drifting around, now, with some of our passengers gone and the sunniness of others in eclipse." Twain to W.D. Howells