On Growing Old ~ Mark Twain

【Twain's seventiteth birthday speech, 1905】And I wish to urge you this - which I think is wisdom - that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go.

Take any road you please...it curves always, which is a continual promise, whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest.

We can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

There has never been a intelligent person of the age of sixty who would consent to live his life over again. His or anyone else's.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

It isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.

The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows to much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

The natural way provided by nature and the construction of human mind for the discovery of a forgotten event is to employ another forgotten event for its resurrection.

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose.

It takes some time to accept and realize that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still in that matter.


談年歲漸長  ~  馬克吐溫

【一九零五年,馬克吐溫發表七十歲生日感言】我想呼籲大家注意一件事,本人認為這是智慧之言,那就是---當你發覺,想走到七十歲,只有一條不太舒服的路,那就別走上去吧!

隨便選那條路走都行....路總是彎彎曲曲的,這一點準定不會變。平直的道路一眼望去一覽無遺,讓人興趣全消。

我們無法循著別人的道路到達年老。我的習慣保護我的生命,卻會破壞你的。

皺紋,應當只能夠顯示笑容曾出現在何處。

從來沒有哪個六十歲的智者,會同意從頭再活一次。不管是他的一輩子、還是別人的都一樣。

要是我們可以一生下來就是八十歲,然後逐漸活到十八歲,日子絕對快活多了。

我所記得的事情有多少件,那麼,我所記的事實並非如此的,就有多少件。這沒有什麼好叫人驚訝的。

一個人在四十八歲前,就成為悲觀論者,是因為懂得太多;要是他在四十八歲以後變成樂觀者,那麼,就是懂得太少。

當我還是十四歲大的孩子時,覺得家父是那麼的無知,我簡直沒法忍受老頭子在我身邊。不過,等我長到二十一歲時,卻對老頭子在七年中,竟然學了那麼多東西,感到驚訝。

要挖掘遺忘的往事,人類的心智構造,與大自然所提供的自然方法便是,用另一件遺忘的往事,使前一件起死回生。

人若達到那種令人仰之彌高的智慧境界,便再也不會任別人牽著鼻子走。人永遠也達不到此一境界。

人得花一段時日,才會接受並體認到,年華漸老的同時,你的朋友沒有站著不動。(你的朋友們也變老了)