There is a Japanese saying I recall once having heard, of the five stages of man's growth. 'At ten, an animal; at twenty, a lunatic; at thirty, a failure; at forty, a fraud; at fifty, a criminal.' And at sixty, I would add (since by that time one will have gone through all this), one begins advising one's friends; and at seventy (realizing that everything said has been misunderstood) one keeps quiet and is taken for a sage. 'At eighty,' then said Confucius, 'I knew my ground and stood firm.

• humanity
• aging
• maturity
• time
• will
• recall