What I wonder is, maybe the world is growing older. Less all alive. Or is it only my growing older?” “Everybody always wonders that. I don’t think, really, anyone could feel the world grow older. Its life is far too long for that.” She took a black man of Alice’s. “What maybe you learn as you grow older is that the world is old — very old. When you’re young, the world seems young. That’s all.

How can you respect the world when you see it's being run by a bunch of kids turned old?

The older you get, the more it means.

You owned the world when you were a young man, felt it like it was fashioned to fit your hands. You could do anything with it you wanted to. But the world kept changing, and sooner or later there came a day when it didn’t feel like you were the one the world was interested in any more.

[T]he older I get the more I realise that the world is not as varied as we thought it was when we were young. Most places are much alike.

What you learn as you get older is that the world is old, and has been old for a long time.

Some people belong entirely to others ... They have not a day, not an hour to call their own, so completely do they give themselves to others. This is true even in matters of understanding. Some people know everything for others and nothing for themselves.

But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost — swallowed up in the ocean — unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward.

Some people belong entirely to others… They have not a day, not an hour to call their own, so completely do they give themselves to others. This is true even in matters of understanding. Some people know everything for others and nothing for themselves.

You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.

When you're younger, you think you have a handle on things. As you get older, you realize you don't

We also notice, at the other end, how the shadows of old age are lit more and more from the invisible world.

I think people understand things different when they get older. It’s not a question of getting soft, or seeing things in the gray areas instead of black and white. I really believe I’m just understanding things different. Better.

I've always had the sense that my life is run by other people.