Routines for a long life - Samuel Clemens
From a 1905 speech on the 70th birthday of Samuel Clemens:
"I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have out us out of commission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this; That we can't reach old age by another man's road."
Sleep
"We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up - that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I have to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity."
Diet
"In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it.. . .For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until 7:30 in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and it is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it."
Smoking
"I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restrictions as regards smoking."
Drinking
"As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference."
Exercise
"I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. It cannot be any benefit when you are tired; I was always tired."
"I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that is really the common rule for attaining to old age. When we examine the programme of any of these garrulous old people we always find that the habits which have preserved them would have decayed us; that the way of life which enabled them to live upon the property of their heirs so long, as Mr. Choate says, would have out us out of commission ahead of time. I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this; That we can't reach old age by another man's road."
Sleep
"We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to harden, presently they petrify, then business begins. Since forty I have been regular about going to bed and getting up - that is one of the main things. I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn't anybody left to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to get up when I have to. This has resulted in an unswerving regularity of irregularity."
Diet
"In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it.. . .For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until 7:30 in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and it is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it."
Smoking
"I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restrictions as regards smoking."
Drinking
"As for drinking, I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference."
Exercise
"I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. It cannot be any benefit when you are tired; I was always tired."
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