The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.
At 50, if you are on a diet on your birthday, you can't eat a piece of your birthday cake. So grab two, a piece in each hand and, lo and behold, you will be on a balanced diet! Happy birthday, old chum!
If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son.
At fifteen, my mind was bent on learning.
At thirty, I stood firm.
At forty, I had no doubts.
At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven.
At sixty, my ear was receptive to truth.
At seventy, I could follow my heart's desires without sin.
I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.