“If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.”

—  Charles Lamb , Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

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Charles Lamb 85
English essayist 1775–1834

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