When the old man waggles his head and says, “Ah, so I thought when I was your age,” he has proved the youth’s case. Doubtless, whether from growth of experience or decline of animal heat, he thinks so no longer; but he thought so while he was young; and all men have thought so while they were young, since there was dew in the morning or hawthorn in May; and here is another young man adding his vote to those of previous generations and riveting another link to the chain of testimony.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet

Essay (1878-03), “Crabbed Age and Youth,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 37
    (Source)

Collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 2 (1881).