Memory in youth is active and easily impressible in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.

The remark contrasts the mind’s receptivity at different life stages. In youth, memory is portrayed as pliant—quick to take impressions and form lasting traces—whereas in old age it becomes less responsive to novelty, even as it preserves early experiences with unusual clarity. The image suggests that what we absorb when young can become the durable core of identity, while later life may be shaped more by recollection than by fresh formation. It also implies a quiet melancholy: aging can narrow the range of new emotional or intellectual imprints, leaving the past disproportionately vivid and influential.