How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
question, "How does love suit with age, Sophocles--are you still
the man you were?"
"Peace," he replied; "most gladly have I escaped that, and I feel
as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."
That saying of his has often come into my mind since, and seems to
me still as good as at the time when I heard him. For certainly old
age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax
their hold, then, as Sophocles says, you have escaped from the
control not of one master only, but of many. And of these regrets,
as well as of the complaint about relations, Socrates, the cause is
to be sought, not in men's ages, but in their characters and
tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel
the pressure of age, but he who is of an opposite disposition will
find youth and age equally a burden.
--_The Republic_