These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.

Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence