Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice it whitens only the hair.

The saying argues that age is not a moral alchemy: it can heighten the honor we grant to genuine virtue—because long-tested goodness commands added respect—but it does not rehabilitate vice. If someone’s character is corrupt, the passage of years does not make it less contemptible; time merely changes outward appearance (“it whitens only the hair”). The point is a rebuke to the tendency to excuse wrongdoing in elders simply because they are old, and a reminder that reverence for age should be contingent on character rather than chronology.