OLD AGE QUOTES V

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

I used to think I preferred getting old to the alternative, but now I'm not sure. Sometimes the monotony of bingo and sing-alongs and ancient dusty people parked in the hallway in wheelchairs makes me long for death. Particularly when I remember that I'm one of the ancient dusty people, filed away like some worthless tchotchke.

SARA GRUEN

Water for Elephants

Tags: Sara Gruen


It would be a good appendix to the Art of Living and Dying, if any one would write the Art of Growing Old, and teach men to resign their pretensions to the pleasures and gallantries of youth, in proportion to the alteration they find in themselves by the approach of age and infirmities. The infirmities of this stage of life would be much fewer, if we did not affect those which attend the more vigorous and active part of our days; but, instead of studying to be wiser, or being contented with our present follies, the ambition of many of us is also to be the same sort of fools we formerly have been.

JOSEPH ADDISON

The Tatler, December 21, 1710

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When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997


When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past -- and when you're seventy, nearly all of you.

JEAN ANOUILH

Time Remembered

Tags: Jean Anouilh


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


In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk

Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Few know how to be old.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

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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

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Before forty we live forwards; after forty we live backwards.

CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM

The Maxims of Marmaduke

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Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf,
Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child,
As a dream set afloat in the daylight.

AESCHYLUS

Agamemnon

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Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.

TRACY LETTS

August: Osage Country

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You know you're getting old when your back starts going out more than you do.

PHYLLIS DILLER

Housekeeping Hints

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The world's oldest woman passed away at 116. They keep dying. I think that title may be cursed.

DAVID LETTERMAN

Late Show with David Letterman, December 18, 2012

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Old age is gentle as an autumn morn;
The harvest over, you will put the plough
Into another, stronger hand, and watch
The sowing you were wont to do.

CARMEN SYLVA

"A Friend"

Tags: Carmen Sylva


Society often sends the message that old age is just a waiting room for the end--either elderly people are weak, sick, and irrelevant or that old age is all about meaningless recreation.

ANDREA BRANDT

"4 Keys to Increase Your Happiness As You Get Older", Psychology Today, February 1, 2017


The solitude in which we are left by the death of our friends is one of the great evils of protracted life. When I look back to the days of my youth, it is like looking over a field of battle. All, all dead! and ourselves left alone midst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Francis Adrian Van Der Kemp, January 11, 1825

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To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent -- that is to triumph over old age.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Ponkapog Papers

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In youth all doors open outward; in old age all open inward.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk

Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside -- from others. We do not accept it willingly.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


Old age is fertile terrain for unsettling dreams. To dream of dying is one of the more disconcerting experiences, for you can't be sure that you haven't really died until you have pinched yourself a number of times after waking up: you might just have been experiencing the afterlife.

ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR

"My night with Brigitte Bardot", Spectator, January 18, 2017