He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.

Man must first live before he can live abundantly.

Children... constitute man's eternity.

In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age. And if thou understandest that old age is fed with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that sustenance may not be lacking to thy old age.

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

Education is the best provision for old age

Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.

For it is given that no man can do it all, that each must carry the future forward a few years and then pass the message on to him who follows.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

270. A Man among Children will be long a Child, a Child among Men will be soon a Man.

The child raised for his station, never leaving it, could not be exposed to the disadvantages of another. But given the mobility of human things, given the unsettled and restless spirit of this age which upsets everything in each generation, can one conceive of a method more senseless than raising a child as though he never had to leave his room, as though he were going to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the unfortunate makes a single step on the earth, if he goes down a single degree, he is lost. This is not teaching him to bear suffering; it is training him to feel it. One thinks only of preserving one’s child. That is not enough. One ought to teach him to preserve himself as a man. to bear the blows of fate, to brave opulence and poverty, to live, if he has to. in freezing Iceland or on Malta’s burning rocks. You may very well take precautions against his dying. He will nevertheless have to die. And though his death were not the product of your efforts, still these efforts would be ill conceived. It is less a question of keeping him from dying than of making him live. To live is not to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence.

The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it.

We spend the vast bulk of money in the health, welfare, and education systems in the later years of life. Yet it is in the earliest years that life chances are moulded and set.

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.