What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?
[Lat., Quod enim munus reiplicae afferre majus, meliusve possumus, quam si docemus atque erudimus juventutem?]
No sensible man (among the many things that have been written on this kind) ever imputed inconsistency to another for changing his mind.
[Lat., Nemo doctus unquam (multa autem de hoc genere scripta sunt) mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.]
As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.
Enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it and do not bewail it when it is gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the passing of youth. Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age.. each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.
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