"Old age, with all its bitterness, and sorrows, and accumulation of troubles, is already near to me. This worst of evils you [Nature] have destined for us and all created beings, from the time of infancy. From the fifth lustre of life, decline makes itself manifest; its progress we are powerless to stay. Scarce a third of life is spent in the bloom of youth; but few moments are claimed by maturity; all the rest is one gradual decay, with its attendant evils."