A slender curved glass sculpture glows along a central crack against a dark background.

Original artwork, not a still

Eleanor Roosevelt

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature. But beautiful old people are works of art.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker contrasts youthful beauty, which simply happens by luck of nature, with beauty in old age, which is shaped by a life. Older faces are treated as deliberately made, like art. The saying honours age rather than merely consoling it.

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