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Old age (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠the ripest time for poetry, not youth: life's interests are still there, but as shadows, not passions.

Old age (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠dwelling more and more within oneself and one's general ideas, until interest — inter-esse — falls away into contented, processless habit.

Old age (n.) comes ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠when life's diversity sinks into habit and regularity, ending the tension that sustains life; death is just such a hardening against that tension.

Old age (n.) is ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠the animal's self-inflicted death: reaching only an abstract universality, it blunts its activity, grows ossified, and kills itself by itself.

Old age (n.) completes ⁠​‌​​​‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​‌​​​​​‌‌​​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​⁠our unity with the world — on one side sinking into the inertia of deadening habit, on the other freed from the petty entanglements of the present.