Thomas Buddenbrook in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, meditating on the irritations of growing old:

“We’re only as young or old as we feel. And when something good we’ve longed for finally does come along, it lumbers in a little too late somehow, loaded down with petty, annoying, upsetting details, covered with all the grime of reality that we never really imagined, and that is so irritating – irritating.”