May Sarton ( ) diarist, novelist and poet

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1 May Sarton ( ) diarist, novelist and poet Old age is a disguise that no one but the old themselves see through. I feel exactly as I always did, as young inside as when I was twenty-one, but the outward shell conceals the real me sometimes even from itself and betrays that person deep down inside, under wrinkles and liver spots and all the horrors of decay.

2 Teihard de Chardin SJ ( ) When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more when they touch my mind); when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; When the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me; in all these dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is You (provided my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibres of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within Yourself.

3 Arthur Schopenhauser ( ) philosopher The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

4 Rabbi Abraham Heschel ( ) When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

5 Maggie Kuhn ( ) American Elder Rights Activist Ageing begins with the moment of birth, and it ends only when life itself has ended. Life is a continuum; only, we in our stupidity and blindness, have chopped it up into little pieces and kept all those little pieces separate.

6 Florida Scott-Maxwell ( ) Playwright & Author Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age... We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high.

7 Pablo Casals ( ) Cellist & Conductor On my last birthday I was ninety-three years old. That is not young, of course. In fact, it is older than ninety. But age is a relative matter. If you continue to work and to absorb the beauty in the world about you, you find that age does not necessarily mean getting old. At least, not in the ordinary sense. I feel many things more intensely than ever before, and for me life grows more fascinating.

8 Jean Paul Richter ( ) Writer The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

9 John Barrymore ( ) Actor A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

10 A Turkish Wisdom tale Turkish folk hero Mulla Nasr Edin had reached old age and was sitting in a tea house with friends looking back on his life: "When I was a young man I was filled with the goal of awakening everyone and I prayed to God to give me what was needed to change the world. One day in middle age I realized that my life was half over and I had accomplished little. I had changed no one. So again I prayed to God to give me what was needed to change only those near me, since it was obvious that they needed to change. Now that I have reached old age my prayer is much more simple. 'God,' I pray, 'give me what is needed to change myself.' "

11 Anonymous God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

12 Michael Guilford The only people who are old are those who think they have learnt all they need to know and have given up discovering. For the rest of us each day reminds us of our ignorance and needles us towards discovering more, about ourselves and about life and death.

13 Hector Hugh Munro (a.k.a. Saki) ( ) Writer The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

14 Madeleine L Engle ( ) Writer The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

15 Marie de Hennezel (1946-) Psychologist & Psychotherapist I have the feeling that the future is bound to be less sombre than we think. We will grow old for longer, but in a better way. She continues We still have to construct a more positive image of this time of life, confront our fears in order to overcome them, and work out a real policy for preventing unhappy old age. Lastly, it is up to us to combat the denial of old age and death, by working at growing old.

National Quali cations

H 2018 X715/76/11 National Quali cations Classical Studies WEDNESDAY, 23 MAY 9:00 AM 11:15 AM Total marks 60 SECTION 1 LIFE IN CLASSICAL GREECE 20 marks Attempt EITHER Part A OR Part B SECTION 2 CLASSICAL