OLD AGE QUOTES III

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

J. K. ROWLING

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Tags: J. K. Rowling


The great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world.

MARCEL PROUST

Swann's Way

Tags: Marcel Proust


I've finally reached the age where my Wild Oats have turned into All-Bran!

TOM WILSON

Ziggy, November 19, 1999

Tags: Tom Wilson


Once a happy old man
One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.

JOHN ASHBERY

"A Last World"

Tags: John Ashbery


Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Regiment Of Health", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

Tags: Francis Bacon


Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The Virginians

Tags: William Makepeace Thackeray


We have confidence in an old man when holding a position, but lack confidence in him when he is applying for one.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

T. S. ELIOT

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Tags: T. S. Eliot


As we grow older, we must discipline ourselves to continue expanding, broadening, learning, keeping out minds active and open.

CLINT EASTWOOD

attributed, Sad Sayings

Tags: Clint Eastwood


We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones ...

GRAMPA SIMPSON

"Last Exit to Springfield", The Simpsons


I always liked people who are older. Of course, every year it gets harder to find them.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

The Paris Review, summer 1993

Tags: Fran Lebowitz


How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep ... that have taken hold.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

The Return of the King

Tags: J. R. R. Tolkien


After a man passes sixty, his mischief is mainly in his head.

EDGAR WATSON HOWE

Country Town Sayings

Tags: Edgar Watson Howe


The old are apt to mistake age for experience, and to imagine they are privileged to give good advice, though they may have lived only to afford bad example.

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections

Tags: Norman MacDonald


As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new, and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
'Neath every one a friend.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Sixty-eighth Birthday

Tags: James Russell Lowell


When you're five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties you know how hold you are. I'm twenty-three, you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.

SARA GRUEN

Water for Elephants

Tags: Sara Gruen


No man loves life like him that's growing old.

SOPHOCLES

fragment, Acrisius

Tags: Sophocles


There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not anymore. Now I'm startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never at all the one that I expect. I have been elbowed aside by a parody of myself, a sadly dishevelled figure in a Halloween mask made of sagging, pinkish- grey rubber that bears no more than a passing resemblance to the image of what I look like that I stubbornly retain in my head.

JOHN BANVILLE

The Sea

Tags: John Banville


Oft am I by the Women told,
Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old,
Look how thy hairs are falling all;
Poor Anacreon how they fall.
Whether I grow old or no,
By th' Effects I do not know.
This I know without being told,
'Tis time to Live, if I grow Old.
'Tis time short Pleasures now to take;
Of little Life the best to make,
And manage wisely the last Stake.

ANACREON

"Ode X", Odes

Tags: Anacreon


What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.

ROBERT BROWNING

"Jochanan Hakkadosh"

Tags: Robert Browning