One should cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Just as the farm was serene and mature, with full-grown trees and the patina of use and familiarity making it mellow, so a human being reaches a point of beauty when time has done its work. 

Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the quiet conversation after dinner, when the candles burn low, is best. Each pleasure reserves to the end its best things. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but had not yet reached the abrupt decline. 

And I myself believe that even the period which stands, so to speak, on the edge of the roof, possesses pleasure of its own. Or else the fact of our not wanting pleasures has taken the place of the pleasures themselves. How comforting it is to have tired out one’s appetites, and to have done with them

- From A.C. Grayling’s The Good Book: A Secular Bible