The Fountain, st. ?? (1799).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“The heads of strong old age are beautiful / Beyond all grace of youth”
“Strength and beauty are the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.”
Fragment quoted in H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. II (1952), no. 294; reference taken from Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 261
Swenson, 1959, p. 21
1840s, Either/Or (1843)
“Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.”
3.
Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)
“Happiness is the free play of the instincts, and so is youth.”
Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth
“Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.”
“Age is never so old as youth would measure it.”
"The Wit of Porportuk" in The Best Short Stories of Jack London (1962) ISBN 0-449-30053-6
“Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Context: Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
“In youth, we run into difficulties. In old age, difficulties run into us.”
Josh Billings, as quoted in Mac's Giant Book of Quips and Quotes (1983) by E. C. McKenzie
Misattributed
