Anyway, those things would not have lasted long. The experience of the years shows it to me. But Destiny arrived in some haste and stopped them. The beautiful life was brief. But how potent were the perfumes, On how splendid a bed we lay, To what sensual delight we gave our bodies. An echo of the days of pleasure, An echo of the days drew near me, A little of the fire of the youth of both of us, Again I took in my hands a letter, And I read and reread till the light was gone. And melancholy, I came out on the balcony Came out to change my thoughts at least by looking ATA little of the city that I loved, A little movement on the street and in the

— Constantinos P. Cavafis

Autumn is an interesting season, even in the metaphor of life, is a time of decline, of loss, but also intense and haunting beauty. Some places, like some people, never are, or have been, as beautiful in their fall.

— Luigina Sgarro

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.

— Mordecai Richler

Beauty is only to be admired, only to be loved - to be harvested carefully and then flung at a chosen lover like a gift of roses. It seems to me, so far as I can judge clearly at all, that my beauty would be used like that...

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Because I’ve gotten older, I worry that there will be a steep decline in my talent, but I promise not to let the same thing happen to my passion for writing.

— Pat Conroy

Because though women lie when they have to and men lie all the time, the mirror always tells the truth.

— Jane Yolen

Behold yon rough and flinty road Where youth, now youth no more, Gropes whining, seeking crumbs of loaves He cast away of yore.

— Emma Ghent Curtis

But here we call it Spring, when a young man’s fancy turns, fitfully, lightly, to idling in the sun, to touching in the dark. And the old man's? To worms in their garden box; stepping aside moment in a poem that will remember, fitfully, who made it and the discordant stammer, and change of heart and catch of breath it sprang from. A bending down lightly to touch the earth.

— David Malouf

By contrast, my wife at fifty-two yeas old seems to me just as attractive as the day I first met her. If I were to say this out loud, she would say, 'Douglas, that's just a line. No one prefers wrinkles, no one prefers gray.' To which I'd reply, 'But none of this is a surprise. I've been expecting to watch you grow older ever since we met. Why should it trouble me? It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or fourth-three. It's that face.' Perhaps she would have liked to hear this, but I had never got around to saying it out loud. I had always presumed there would be time and now, sitting on the edge of the bed at four a.m., no longer listening out for burglars, it seemed that it might be too late.

— David Nicholls

Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.

— Giacomo Leopardi