' JULY 5TH, 1868: Today I have completed sixty-four Springtimes...and now here I am, a very old woman, embarked on my-sixty-fifth year. By one of those strange oddities in my destiny, I am now in much better health, much stronger, much more active, than I ever was in my youth... I am troubled by no hankering after the days my youth: I am no longer ambitious for fame: I desire no money except in so far as I should like to be able to leave something to my children and grandchildren...This astonishing old age... has brought me neither infirmity nor lowered vitality.
Can I still make myself useful? That one may legitimately ask, and I think that I can answer 'yes'. I feel that I may be useful in a more personal, more direct way than ever before. I have, though how I do not know, acquired much wisdom. I am better equipped to bring up children... It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. One climbs higher and higher with the advancing years, and that, too, with surprising strides. How good life is when all that one loves is as warm with life! '
Letter from George Sand to a friend
George Sand
I have completed sixty- six Springtimes... and now here I am, embarked on my sixty-seventh year. Although far from great health like George Sand ... I desire no fame only maybe more hair : ) and enough money to move into the country or a larger older home and have that to leave behind to my children. Age has given me much wisdom and lessons learned. It's never too late - I Love painting ♥️, creating, learning.
Mariage D'amour by Paul de Senneville
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late—
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand “Oedipus,” and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers
When each had numbered more than fourscore years;
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had begun his “Characters of Men.”
Chaucer, at Woodstock, with his nightingales,
At sixty wrote the “Canterbury Tales.”
Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed “Faust” when eighty years were past.
What then? Shall we sit idly down and say,
“The night has come; it is no longer day”?
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress.
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
It is never too late to start doing what is right.
Never.
Wrote his grand “Oedipus,” and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers
When each had numbered more than fourscore years;
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had begun his “Characters of Men.”
Chaucer, at Woodstock, with his nightingales,
At sixty wrote the “Canterbury Tales.”
Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed “Faust” when eighty years were past.
What then? Shall we sit idly down and say,
“The night has come; it is no longer day”?
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress.
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
It is never too late to start doing what is right.
Never.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
