AGEHow stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps! Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John
Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years
ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing
for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder
if a person ever really ceases to feel young--I mean, for a whole day
at a time. It was on the 10th day of May--1884--that I confessed to age by mounting
spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth,
to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles
stayed on. |
Composite
photo of Clemens
Clemens
and childhood sweetheart
|
| Life would be infinitely happier if we could
only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. - quoted in Autobiography with Letters, William L. Phelps If I had been helping the Almighty when he created man, I would have had him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How much better to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning! - Mark Twain, a Biography Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. - Letter to Edward Dimmitt, 7/19/1901 |
 Illustration by "Dwig" from Brevities, 1903 |
Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.
- Following the Equator
Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored
flower in his button-hole.
- The American Claimant
Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments--notably those
of the violin--but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge.
- Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion
Seventy is old enough. After that there is too much risk.
- Following the Equator
I was young and foolish then; now I am old an foolisher.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost
the faculty of putting out blossoms.
- Letter to Joe Goodman, 4/1891
I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown
old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good.
- Life on the Mississippi
When a man stands on the verge of seventy-two you know perfectly well that he
never reached that place without knowing what this life is--heartbreaking bereavement.
- "Books, Authors, and Hats," Mark Twain's Speeches
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