Laudator Temporis Acti

Katie Rogers, "Asked About Age, Biden Says He Knows 'More Than the Vast Majority of People'," New York Times (May 5, 2023):

"I have acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom and know more than the vast majority of people," Mr. Biden told the MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle in an interview that aired on Friday night. "And I'm more experienced than anybody that's ever run for the office. And I think I've proven myself to be honorable as well as also effective."

Euripides, fragment 25 Kannicht (from Aeolus; tr. Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp):

Oh, alas, how true the ancient saying is: we old men are nothing but noise and mere shapes, and we move as imitations of dreams; there is no intelligence in us, yet we think we have good sense.

φεῦ φεῦ, παλαιὸς αἶνος ὡς καλῶς ἔχει·
γέροντες οὐδέν ἐσμεν ἄλλο πλὴν ψόφος
καὶ σχῆμ᾽, ὀνείρων δ᾽ ἕρπομεν μιμήματα·
νοῦς δ᾽ οὐκ ἔνεστιν, οἰόμεσθα δ᾽ εὖ φρονεῖν.

2 ψόφος Heinrich Hirzel: ὄχλος codd.

The same, tr. C.M. Bowra in The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), p. 455, number 389:

Alas, how right the ancient saying is:
We, who are old, are nothing else but noise
And shape. Like mimicries of dreams we go,
And have no wits, although we think us wise.

See Matthew Wright, "Gnomic φεῦ," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 56 (2016) 585-593 (at 590).