Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on maturity

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007Cat’s Cradle (1963), Chapter 88

• Laughter

Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man.

Democritus460–360 BCFreeman (1948), p. 152

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein1879–1955Out of My Later Years (1950), Ch. 2 “Self-Portrait” (1936), p. 5

• Age