There is a Japanese saying I recall once having heard, of the five stages of a man's growth: "At ten, an animal; at twenty, a lunatic; at thirty, a failure; at forty, a fraud; at fifty, a criminal."

And at sixty, I would add (since by that time, one would have gone through all this), one begins advising one's friends; and at seventy (realizing that everything said has been misunderstood), one keeps quiet and is taken for a sage.

"At eighty," then said Confucius, "I knew my ground and stood firm."

~J. Campbell~