I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.
The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honourable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul
Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.
What is necessary is to teach each class and profession the importance of the others. All together form one mighty body; labourer, peasant, and professional man.
The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.
The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.
That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue.
Like hunger, physical love is a necessity. But man's appetite for amour is never so regular or so sustained as his appetite for the delights of the table.
You have been used to take notice of the sayings of dying men — this is mine: That a life spent in the service of God, and communion with him, is the most comfortable and pleasant life that one can live in the present world.