Birthday Post

From Petrarch's Letter to Posterity: 

As a young man I was deluded, as an adult I went astray; but old age corrected me and experience convinced me of the truth of what I had read a long time before—that youth and pleasure are vain; or to be more exact, I was taught that by Him who creates all times and ages, and who allows wretched mortals, swollen with unjustified pride, to go astray from time to time, so that eventually they may recognize their sinfulness and see themselves as they really are.