Civilizations founded upon polygamy have always given way to those founded upon monogamy. Polygamy weakens men and diminishes the charm of the commun… - André Maurois

Everything that tends to make it difficult to distinguish youth from age is an act of civilization. The best-mannered age in history invented the wig - a homage rendered by hair to baldness. The effect of powder and rouge is to make young women like their grandmothers, and invalids like healthy people. Clever dressmaking establishments and beauty shops create fashions which make it possible for elderly women to keep hoping. After a certain age, the art of dressing consists of hiding one's shortcomings, and this is another form of politeness. The veil is a marvelous invention for confusing the image and giving its wearers the semblance of beauty. All adornments are veils: they conceal the ravages of time as well as may be.

Great things are not accomplished with physical strength and agility, says Cicero, but through consultation, authority, and the mature wisdom which old age, far from lacking, is endowed with abundantly.

In 1936 at the time when the German troops had reoccupied the Rhineland in defiance of the Treaty of Locarno, English public opinion, drunk with pacifism, had refused to support us.
"Why should we?" an English politician said to me. "The Germans can do what they like in their own back garden."