old age“Now the harvest of old age is,
as I have often said,
the memory and rich store of blessings
laid up in earlier life.
Again, all things that accord with nature
are to be counted as good.
But what can be more in accordance with Nature
than for old men to die?
A thing, indeed, which also befalls young men,
though Nature revolts and fights against it.
Accordingly, the death of young men
seems to me like putting out a great fire
with a deluge of water;
but old men die like a fire going out
because it has burnt down of its own nature
without artificial means.
Again, just as apples when unripe
are torn from trees,
but when ripe and mellow drop down,
so it is violence that takes life from young men,
ripeness from old.
This ripeness is so delightful to me that,
as I approach nearer to death,
I seem, as it were, to be sighting land,
and to be coming to port
at last after a long voyage.”
- Cicero
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