Noah was great in years; Jacob was great in years, Solomon was great in years — that is, through their inner life they had gone beyond time as we know it. This is why the ancient civilizations, those that had roots in the teachings of wisdom, revered old age. It was not out of some sentimentality or some self-serving motive; not out of a sociopsychological pattern of familial bonding. It was for a metaphysical reason. An individual who had spent his life struggling for the inner Self had gathered something within himself that called to every other man or woman who came in touch with him. In such an old man or woman one saw that time was not only a destroyer but a creator.
— Jacob Needleman, Time and the Soul