For all their current prestige Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.
The answer to old age is to keep one's mind busy and to go on with one's life as if it were interminable. I always admired Chekhov for building a new house when he was dying of tuberculosis.
Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.
There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone but years after we know it was much later.
I will never be an old man. To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.