’Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.

The quote separates a passive fact—having lived a certain number of years—from an active achievement: becoming mature. “Age” is described as simple acceptance of a label, a social or numerical designation. “Maturity,” by contrast, is the “glory” of years: what time can yield when it is metabolized into insight, steadiness, and artistic or personal depth. Graham implies that time alone does not confer value; value comes from how experience is integrated. The phrasing also resists cultural anxieties about aging, especially acute in dance, by proposing a different metric of worth—one grounded in developed perception and mastery rather than youth.