The Elderly Are Those Who Have Been Lucky Enough to Reach Old Age

Reflections such as these are subtly collected in this book and placed in the light of her own reflections by Luz María Londoño. With secret, fascinated delight, she has journeyed through the vast garden of universal literature, selecting the most memorable thoughts on life and death and that forcible interval called old age, which have thrived from Seneca to the present day.

Those of us who have reached the threshold of seventy or eighty years of age cannot remain indifferent to all the memories stirred by these pages. “We all want to live to old age and we all deny that we have done so”, wrote Quevedo. And, centuries later, Trotsky echoed these words in a similar reflection: “To age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to man”. Very true. Old age is similar to twilight: it suddenly, briefly and intensely lights up the high points of our lives like an announcement and a preamble to night.