'To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living'; so wrote Henri Amiel in 1874. More than a century later, as more and more of us are destined to live into our eighties, his challenge becomes more pressing than ever; and we need to decide from whom to gain that knowledge. As we go through life, we meet octogenarians who offer us rare role models for growing old. We meet vigorous, generative great-grandparents, and we wonder how they became that way.
— George E. Vaillant, Aging Well