Do writers have "age anxiety"?

Another spring, nature gave birth to the feeling of growing up another year, when it comes to "age", it is anxiety, it is uneasiness, it is enjoyment. There is confusion, there is unwillingness, there is expectation. How do writers in ancient and modern China and abroad view "age"?

v. (tǔ) bitter (cáo) faction

In January, I will be 30 years old. It's terrible. And my mood is this: it seems like I'm only 22 years old.

- [Russian] Chekhov

I am most afraid of people saying two things to me, one is "don't waste your time, work hard" and the other is "not young, get married soon".

——Zhu Shenghao

When I was in my twenties, critics called me barbaric; in my thirties they called me frivolous; in my forties they said I was cynical; in my fifties they said I was capable; now that I'm in my sixties, they say I'm shallow. But I've always been good at myself.

- [English] Maugham

Age always comes as expected, and sorrow always comes uninvited.

——Wang Guozhen

Rhino (zā) Li (xīn) pie

What is adult? A child who is inflated by age.

—Simon De Beauvoir

Twenty-year-olds are not crazy without ambition, and thirty-year-olds are crazy without minds.

- Qian Zhongshu

No one grows old because they live a few more years, and people only grow old because they abandon their ideals.

- Barkin

Most people die in their twenties and thirties: once they pass this age, they become only shadows of themselves. Later life is nothing more than to imitate oneself, to repeat what the previous truly human times said, done, thought, liked, day by day, and the way of repetition is more and more mechanical, more and more out of the box...

- [Law] Romain Rolland

The Mian (jiā) Li (yóu) faction

You are so young, everything is beginning, I will do my best to ask you, to be patient with all the difficulties in your heart.

- [Au] Rilke

When we are thirty years old, we should not rush to the fifty years old. All this will always come. I want you to meditate on the emotion of waiting for the ripe time, and I want you to keep the effort and persistence outside of this waiting.

- Sanmao

When you have youth, feel it. Don't waste your golden age, don't listen to boring things, don't try to save hopeless failures, don't dedicate your life to ignorance, mediocrity, and vulgarity.

- [English] Wilde

Old age, not old age, ideal discarded, fang fall into twilight years. The years are long, the decay is only to the skin, and the enthusiasm is abandoned, and the decadence will lead to the soul.

—[U.S.] Samuel Ullman

I don't care how old you are, I just want to know if you will be unreserved in the face of love and dreams, and invest like a fool.

- [Plus] Orea

For those who, throughout their lives, are eternally eager to conquer – they maintain all the characteristics of youth: a love of adventure, a love of life, a love of fighting, an energetic, an active mind. No matter how old they are, they are young to death. It is as if salmon are facing the rapids, and their natural nature is to face the rapids of time.

- [Dan] Brandeis

Kàn (kàn) through (kāi) school

Wash your face and brush your teeth in the bathroom every morning, then look in the mirror and look at your face. Every time I thought: Oh, oops, old age. At the same time, however, I also think: However, age is indeed increasing day by day. Well, that's right. Think again: Isn't that just right?

If you can think of "this is just right" without hesitation, then it doesn't matter whether you have become an uncle (aunt) or not. It doesn't matter how old you are, you're just a "just right" person.

- [Japanese] Haruki Murakami

Age represents the time a person has from birth to the present. Do you really have it? Where are they?

It is always like this: because of the loss of childhood, we know that we have grown up; because of the loss of years, we know that we are alive; because of the loss, we know time.

——Zhou Guoping

Hin (zhù) reward (fú) pie

Human life is a chain, there will always be children younger than you and older people than you, each of us has our own place, there is a treasure that no one can plunder.

--Bi Shumin

All the magnificence of the world cannot help but fade, and you are as lush as midsummer and have not withered.

- Shakespeare

On the road, we are always young and always in tears.

--[Beauty] Jack Kerouac

You are made up of matter as old as Earth, and a third of it is even the same age as the universe. However, this is the first time these atoms have come together in this way, and they are thought to be you.

—Frank Kroos

(Source: CCTV News Night Reading)