One ages so quickly if one is out of step with the world.

Cold winds of autumn rustle through the withered reeds
Grey in the evening;
Crows flicker inland from the willow trees.

Standing still and alone on the strand, an old man
Feels the wind in his hair, the night and approaching snow,
He gazes across from the shadowed shore to the brightness
Where, between the clouds and lake, a band
Of distant shore still warmly glows in light -
The gold beyond, blissful as dreams and poems.

He holds the glowing image in his eye
And thinks of home, and thinks of his good years
Sees the gold grow pale, sees it die out
And then he turns away and very slowly
Wanders inland from the willow trees.

Hermann Hesse - Sketch 1937

Anyone who has stepped onto the path of maturity
can never lose again, but can only win.
Until one day the time comes
when he too finds the cage door open
and with one final beat of the heart
escapes from the inadequate.

Herman Hesse 1916

It was a fine and shining summer here in the southern Alps, and for two weeks I had been feeling a secret fear that it would end - a fear that I know to be the additional and most secret ingredient of all things beautiful.

Just as in youth, in times of beauty and enjoyment, one can never get enough of the pleasures of the eye and the other senses [...], as one grows old it's the same with knowledge - one knows one must gather in as many as possible of the endlessly knowable things on earth, and that is a wonderful occupation.

Hermann Hesse 1938