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The key is to keep moving forward. Marion Countess Dönhoff had a great line about aging in an interview when she was in her 80s: "every day a little more self-discipline."

Dönhoff was an East Prussian who became an influential journalist and later newspaper publisher in W. Germany after the war. In her family, the attitude to life was basically shut up, deal with it, and keep going. She was an aristocrat in the best sense of the word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_D%C3%B6nhoff

Edit: typo



Do you have a source for that quote? I would love to know! Thank you.


I'm sad to say I don't. It was in a German-language interview and really stuck in my head. "Jeden Tag ein bisschen mehr Selbstdisziplin."

She wrote a memoir about her upbringing in East Prussia called "Kindheit in Ostpreussen." The English translation is entitled "Before the Storm: Memories of My Youth in Old Prussia." [1] It's a somewhat wandering story but the account of growing up in a Prussian aristocratic family on a huge estate is quite marvelous. That world--for better or worse--has perished almost without a trace.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/138357.Before_The_Storm




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