“What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light
“A man thirty years old, I said to myself, should have his field of life all ploughed, and his planting well done; for after that it is summer time
“Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever
“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age
“A birthday: and now a day that rose with much of hope, with meaning rife. A thoughtful day from dawn to close: the middle day of human life
“The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties
“To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
“Believing hear, what you deserve to hear: Your birthday as my own to me is dear... But yours gives most; for mine did only lend me to the world; yours gave to me a friend
“I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way, by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else....I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road
“Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.