The Measure of a Life Well Lived: Henry Miller on Growing Old, the Perils of Success, and the Secret of Remaining Young at Heart

"Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gayety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of the face."

— Henry Miller on Tu... See more

British philosopher Bertrand Russell on how to grow old. (Russell wrote this at age 81 and went on to live another 16 years.)

“The best way to overcome [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged i... See more

Finally, of course, I speak of nothing except the modest topic: How shall we lead our lives? I think of a man I admire as much as anyone, the English sculptor Henry Moore, eighty-four as I write these notes, eighty when I spoke with him last. "Now that you are eighty," I asked him, "would you tell me the secret of life?" Being a confident and eloqu

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My father, who lived to 94, often said that the 80s had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective. One has had a long experience of life, not only one’s own life, but others’, too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolution... See more

The joy of aging isn’t about abandoning our youth, it’s about balancing learned wisdom with childlike wonder, grounded confidence with conscious curiosity, and innate depth with delicious delight.

- "What could be more worthy, and rewarding, I think, than to give over the second half of life to the recovery of the first?"