OLD AGE QUOTES IV

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

Age is information failure. The body loses fluency.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


The art of growing old is the art of being regarded by the oncoming generations as a support and not as a stumbling-block.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

An Art of Living

Tags: André Maurois


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

EDGAR WATSON HOWE

Country Town Sayings

Tags: Edgar Watson Howe


Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

HERMAN MELVILLE

Moby Dick

Tags: Herman Melville


I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time ... but it's not like that. It happens overnight.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Dance, Dance, Dance

Tags: Haruki Murakami


What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.

ROBERT BROWNING

"Jochanan Hakkadosh"

Tags: Robert Browning


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


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


And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain,
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.
I've lived a life that's full, I traveled each and ev'ry highway,
And more, much more than this. I did it my way.

FRANK SINATRA

My Way

Tags: Frank Sinatra


Age is never so old as youth would measure it.

JACK LONDON

"The Wit of Porportuk"

Tags: Jack London


Until thirty we live through curiosity, after that out of sheer spite and bravado.

ABRAHAM MILLER

Unmoral Maxims

Tags: Abraham Miller


The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

T. S. ELIOT

Time Magazine, October 23, 1950

Tags: T. S. Eliot


Old age makes you a stranger in your own country.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

Tags: Ken Alstad


The real affliction of old age is remorse.

CESARE PAVESE

The Moon and the Bonfire

Tags: Cesare Pavese


There's a reason humans peg-out around eighty: prose fatigue. It looks like organ failure or cancer or stroke but it's really just the inability to carry on clambering through the assault course of mundane cause and effect.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf

Tags: Glen Duncan


If youth and manhood have been passed right, old age will be the happiest time of our worldly existence; and happy the man that can look back on the track he trod and feel no passing pain, no pang of bitter remorse. There's honor in the hoary head of three-score-years-and-ten, and a crown of glory sitting on the silvery locks of the Christian pilgrim nigh his journey's end. Without one dread, without a fear, he views the grave as, in former years, he viewed his couch, knowing that on the morning of eternity, he viewed his couch, knowing that on the morning of eternity he will rise from it, born afresh to live for ever, a life where there are no clouds or sorrow, no desponding hours, no moments of trial nor heartrending woe; but an everlasting succession of days of brightness and perfected happiness in the Paradise of the blest. The happiest days on earth are the last days of the aged Christian; then let us strive to make our last end like his, to die the death of the righteous, for in their death we behold the truth of Christianity, and the unequalled earthly glory of a ripe old age.

T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH

"On Old Age", Short Essays


Old age is perplexing to imagine in part because the definition of it is notoriously unstable. As people age, they tend to move the goalposts that mark out major life stages.

CERIDWEN DOVEY

"What Old Age Is Really Like", The New Yorker, October 1, 2015


Old age is particularly difficult to assume because we have always regarded it as something alien, a foreign species.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"Morituri Salutamus"

Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Old age ought to be, and essentially is a manifestation of what is hidden in the depths of man's nature. It might be, it should be, not an exhibition of crackling impotence and gloomy decay, but the very crown and ripening of life--the symbol of maturity, not of dissolution.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words

Tags: E. H. Chapin