The harvest of old age is, as I have often said, the memory and rich store of blessings laid up in easier life.
Cicero On Old Age (44 BCE) Translated by E. S. Shuckburgh
Source checked by an editor
When and why it was written
- When
- From the closing argument of On Old Age, written in 44 BCE.
- Why
- Cato is answering the claim that old age has nothing left to enjoy.
What it means
Cicero describes later life as a harvest of what was stored earlier. What you notice and keep now becomes what you live on later.
A journal is one of the plainest ways of laying that store up on purpose.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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On Old Age, 44 BCE
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