In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.

The Centaur Not Fabulous. In Five Letters to a Friend on the Life in Vogue. [By Edward Young.] (ed. 1755)