Time & hindsight

What scares you about getting older?

69 answers answered between 1932 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A

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Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 3 Arts and letters 56 Politics and public life 5 Business and finance 2 Technology 1 Sport 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 10 In their forties 8 In their fifties 14 In their sixties 12 Seventy and beyond 15
Winston Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940–1945 and 1951–1955; Member of Parliament 1900–1964
One by one the more vigorous sports and exacting games fall away. Exceptional exertions are purchased only by a more pronounced and more prolonged fatigue. Muscles may relax, and feet and hands slow down; the nerve of youth and manhood may become less trusty. But painting is a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits, keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of Decrepitude. Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely.
Recorded Essay first published in the Strand Magazine in 1921–22 and collected in Amid These Storms, 1932, Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime, Project Gutenberg Canada, 1932 source ↗

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