Beware: open-mindedness will often say, 'Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion.

Nobody loves life like an old man.

There are people who are beautiful in dilapidation, like old houses that were hideous when new.

The mere process of growing old together will make our slightest acquaintances seem like bosom-friends.

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind.

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing-to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.

Openness, as currently conceived, is a way of making surrender to whatever is most powerful, or worship of vulgar success, look principled.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress.

Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways.

Growing old is not a gradual decline, but a series of drops, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another below it.

When the age is in, the wit is out.

What Time hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

No one's so old that he mayn't with decency hope for one more day.

What does long life avail? The best seats at the funerals of friends.

It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! And without too many regrets, if possible! Those from which the sap has withdrawn. But, good Lord, what beautiful colors!

Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.