1And Caecilius spoke better about the old man who looks ahead to another generation than in this, which is also his: 'By Pollux, old age, if you brought no other fault with you when you come, this one alone is enough, that by living long a man sees many things he does not wish.' 1And many things, perhaps, that he does wish; and youth too often runs into things that it does not wish. 1But this, again from Caecilius, is more faulty: 'Then truly in old age I count this most wretched, to feel at that age that one is hateful to another.' 1Pleasant rather than hateful! 26For just as wise old men delight in young men endowed with a good disposition, and the old age of those who are courted and loved by the young becomes lighter, so young men rejoice in the precepts of old men, by which they are led to the pursuit of the virtues; 26and I perceive that I am no less pleasant to you than you are to me.
26But you see how old age is not only not feeble and inactive, but is even busy and always doing and undertaking something, of course of the same kind as each man's pursuits were in his earlier life. 26And what of those who even go on learning something new, as we see Solon too glorying in his verses, where he says that he grows old learning something new every day? 26And I have done the same, for I learned Greek literature as an old man, and I seized on it as greedily as if I longed to quench a long thirst, so that the very things became known to me which you now see me using as examples.
26And when I heard that Socrates had done this with the lyre, I should have liked to do that too, for the ancients used to learn the lyre; but in literature at least I have worked hard.