401 quotes about Age and Aging

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

Addison, Joseph

You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.

Aimee, Anouk

While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

The surest sign of age is loneliness.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

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

Aldrich, Thomas B.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

Ali, Muhammad

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Allen, Hervey

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

Arden, Elizabeth

One's age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful. Hard work at either extremity of life seems out of place. At midday the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be alike calm and cheerful.

Arnold, Thomas

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

Arnold, Thomas

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.

Astaire, Fred

I refuse to admit that I am more than 52, even if that makes my children illegitimate.

Astor, Lady Nancy

Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.

Auber, Daniel Francois Esprit

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

Auden, W. H.

Age will not be defied.

Bacon, Francis

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

Bacon, Francis

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Bacon, Francis

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Bacon, Francis

People of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon and seldom drive business home to it's conclusion, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Bacon, Francis

The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

Ball, Lucille

Old age is the verdict of life.

Barr, Amelia E.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Baruch, Bernard M.

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.

Beauvoir, Simone De

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

Beauvoir, Simone De

We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.

Becker, May L.

We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.

Beckett, Samuel

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.

Beckett, Samuel

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

Bergman, Ingmar

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. [2 Corinthians 4:16]

Bible

While we look not a that things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. [2 Corinthians 4:18]

Bible

With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding. [Job 12:12]

Bible

Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.

Bierce, Ambrose

I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.

Billings, Josh

In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.

Billings, Josh

I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.

Bleasdale, Alan

To resist the frigidity of old age, one must combine the body, the mind, and the heart. And to keep these in parallel vigor one must exercise, study, and love.

Bonstettin

The tendency of old age to the body, say the physiologists, is to form bone. It is as rare as it is pleasant to meet with an old man whose opinions are not ossified.

Boyse, J. F.

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

Brookner, Anita

Old men should have more care to end life well than to live long.

Brown, Captain J.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

Brown, Les

I believe the true function of age is memory. I'm recording as fast as I can.

Brown, Rita Mae

A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made.

Browning, Robert

What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.

Browning, Robert

Grow old with me the best is yet to come.

Browning, Robert

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.

Buck, Pearl S.

It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

Bunuel, Luis

A woman past forty should make up her mind to be young; not her face.

Burke, Billie

Age doesn't matter, unless you're cheese.

Burke, Billie

Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese

Burke, Billie

It's good to be here. At 98, it's good to be anywhere.

Burns, George

You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.

Burns, George

How can I die? I'm booked.

Burns, George

By the time you're eighty years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it.

Burns, George

How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

Burroughs, John

To me -- old age is always ten years older than I am.

Buruch, Andre B.

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that which is most barbarous is the middle age of man! it is -- I really scarce know what; but when we hover between fool and sage, and don't know justly what we would be at -- a period something like a printed page, black letter upon foolscap, while our hair grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.

Byron, Lord

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

Byron, Lord

My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years months days hours or minutes remain that Carpe Diem is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds -- for who can trust to tomorrow?

Byron, Lord

A lady of a certain age, which means certainly aged.

Byron, Lord

I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions, and determined to work them out in the younger ore and better veins of the mine --and I flatter myself (perhaps) that I have pretty well done so --and now the dross is coming.

Byron, Lord

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

Byron, Lord

It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem --and in my esteem age is not estimable.

Byron, Lord

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.

Carey, Joyce

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

Carlyle, Thomas

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Carlyle, Thomas

It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.

Carr, Emily

Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.

Carter, Lillian

Middle age is when a guy keeps turning off lights for economical rather than romantic reasons.

Cass, Eli

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

Cato The Elder

An aged Christian, with the snow of time upon his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest to heaven.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

Chesterfield, Lord

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternatives.

Chevalier, Maurice

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.

Child, Lydia M.

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.

Child, Lydia M.

You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology.

Chopra, Deepak

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

Chopra, Deepak

Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation.

Chopra, Deepak

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets the more interested he is in her.

Christie, Agatha

I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.

Christie, Agatha

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

Churchill, Winston

The foolishness of old age does not characterize all who are old, but only the foolish.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.

Cicero, Marcus T.

There is no one so old as to not think they may live a day longer.

Cicero, Marcus T.

No one is so old as to think he cannot live one more year.

Cicero, Marcus T.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority, that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth.

Cicero, Marcus T.

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided: 1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

A man's as old as he's feeling. A woman as old as she looks.

Collins, Mortimer

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

Colton, Charles Caleb

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

Cope, Wendy

Age is a matter of feeling, not of years.

Curtis, George William

He is so old that his blood type was discontinued.

Dana, Bill

I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.

Dangerfield, Rodney

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can't.

Darrow, Clarence

The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you'll grow out of it!

Day, Doris

Middle age is youth without levity, and age without decay.

Defoe, Daniel

Keep on raging -- to stop the aging.

Delltones, The

At twenty you have many desires which hide the truth, but beyond forty there are only real and fragile truths --your abilities and your failings.

Depardieu, Gerard

I am thirty-three -- the age of the good Sans-culotte Jesus; an age fatal to revolutionists.

Desmoulins, Camille

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.

Dickens, Charles

Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult. [Reflecting on his former status as a teen idol]

Dillon, Matt

The disappointment of manhood succeeds the delusion of youth.

Disraeli, Benjamin

Youth is a blunder, manhood is a struggle and old age a regret.

Disraeli, Benjamin

For in all the world there are no people so piteous and forlorn as those who are forced to eat the bitter bread of dependency in their old age, and find how steep are the stairs of another man's house. Wherever they go they know themselves unwelcome. Wherever they are, they feel themselves a burden. There is no humiliation of the spirit they are not forced to endure. Their hearts are scarred all over with the stabs from cruel and callous speeches.

Dix, Dorothy

Who soweth good seed shall surely reap; The year grows rich as it groweth old, And life's latest sands are its sands of gold!

Dorr, Julia C. R.

By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.

Dressler, Marie

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

Dressler, Marie

Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.

Durrell, Lawrence

Some men are born old, and some men never seem so. If we keep well and cheerful, we are always young and at last die in youth even when in years would count as old.

Edwards, Tryon

Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow up.

Edwards, Tryon

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem -- in my opinion -- to characterize our age.

Einstein, Albert

I'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.

Eliot, George

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Eliot, George

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

Eliot, T. S.

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.

Eliot, T. S.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Engel, Sigmund Z.

The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood, until the time comes for them to depart this life, again like children, neither tired of living nor aware of death.

Erasmus, Desiderius

If youth knew; if age could.

Estienne, Henri

People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can't know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do --after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world's anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.

Faulkner, William

Life begins at 40 -- but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.

Feather, William

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

Fisher, Dorothy Canfield

A man has every season while a woman only has the right to spring. That disgusts me.

Fonda, Jane

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

Franklin, Benjamin

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

Franklin, Benjamin

If you wouldn't live long, live well; for folly and wickedness shorten life.

Franklin, Benjamin

An old young man, will be a young old man.

Franklin, Benjamin

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

Franklin, Benjamin

I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.

Gabriel, Peter

An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

Garfield, James A.

Old age is a shipwreck.

Gaulle, Charles De

Seek ye counsel of the aged for their eyes have looked on the faces of the years and their ears have hardened to the voices of Life. Even if their counsel is displeasing to you, pay heed to them.

Gibran, Kahlil

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Rejoice that you have still have a long time to live, before the thought comes to you that there is nothing more in the world to see.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.

Golding, William

At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.

Gracian, Baltasar

The misery of the middle-aged woman is a gray and hopeless thing, born of having nothing to live for, of disappointment and resentment at having been gypped by consumer society, and surviving merely to be the butt of its unthinking scorn.

Greer, Germaine

Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.

Greer, Germaine

The older woman's love is not love of herself, nor of herself mirrored in a lover's eyes, nor is it corrupted by need. It is a feeling of tenderness so still and deep and warm that it gilds every grass blade and blesses every fly. It includes the ones who have a claim on it, and a great deal else besides. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Greer, Germaine

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.

Greier, John

It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on-screen. I think of myself, and feel like I'm quite young, and then I look at this old man with the baggy chins and the tired eyes and the receding hairline and all that.

Hackman, Gene

The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.

Hardy, Thomas

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

Harris, Corra May

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, Why not? and the other, Why bother?

Harris, Sidney J.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

Harrison, Jane

There are only three ages for women in Hollywood--Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.

Hawn, Goldie

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

Haydon, Benjamin

Age is not important unless you're a cheese.

Hayes, Helen

To be happy, we must be true to nature, and carry our age along with us.

Hazlitt, William

The worst old age is that of the mind.

Hazlitt, William

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

Hemingway, Ernest

He that is not handsome at 20, nor strong at 30, nor rich at 40, nor wise at 50, will never be handsome, strong, rich or wise.

Herbert, George

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

Hershfield, Harry

Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, just in case, in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.

Herzen, Alexander

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

Hoagland, Edward

Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

Hoffer, Eric

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

Hoffer, Eric

To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

Hoffer, Eric

Age, like distance lends a double charm.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.

Hope, Bob

Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.

Hope, Bob

I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap.

Hope, Bob

Growing old is not growing up.

Horton, Doug

Those who search beyond the natural limits will retain good hearing and clear vision, their bodies will remain light and strong, and although they grow old in years they will remain able-bodied and flourishing; and those who are able-bodied can govern to

Huang Ti

When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

Hugo, Victor

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Hugo, Victor

I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.

Inge, Dean William R.

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

Irving, Washington

How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?

James, William

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

Jefferson, Thomas

At last now you can be what the old cannot recall and the young long for in dreams, yet still include them all.

Jennings, Elizabeth

Wrecked on the lee shore of age.

Jewett, Sarah Orne

One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.

Johnson

Talking is the disease of age.

Johnson, Ben

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

Johnson, Samuel

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Johnson, Samuel

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

Jung, Carl

The short bloom of our brief and narrow life flies far away. While we are calling for flowers and wine and woman, old age is upon us.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

In my twenties, my pleasures tended to be physical. In my thirties, my pleasures tended to be intellectual. I can't say which was more exquisite.

Kangas, Steve

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

Kanin, Garson

I'm like old wine. They don't bring me out very often, but I'm well preserved.

Kennedy, Rose F.

A man ninety years old was asked to what he attributed his longevity. I reckon, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, it because most nights I went to bed and slept when I should have sat up and worried.

Kent, Dorothea

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Kierkegaard, Soren

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.

King Jr. Martin Luther

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

Kollwitz, KaThe

The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.

Kronenberger, Louis

Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.

Kuhn, Maggie

Old age is not a disease -- it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.

Kuhn, Maggie

As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Few people know how to be old.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

Old people love to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being able to set a bad example.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.

Landor, Walter Savage

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.

Larkin, Philip

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

Larson, Doug

It is a sobering thought, that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years.

Lehrer, Tom

When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex.

Leith, Prue

The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.

Lerner, Max

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

Lessing, Doris

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become.

Limbaugh, Rush

Like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content.

Lin Yu-tang

To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap into this source, you will truly have defeated age.

Loren, Sophia

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.

Lowell, James Russell

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

Macdonald, George

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.

Macdonald, George

Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.

Marquis, Don

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

Marx, Groucho

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

Marx, Groucho

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Maugham, W. Somerset

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Maugham, W. Somerset

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Maugham, W. Somerset

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

Maugham, W. Somerset

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Maugham, W. Somerset

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.

Maurois, Andre

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul.

Maurois, Andre

No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk --handsome, twenty-two year old.

Mayakovsky, Vladimir

Men of my age live in a state of continual desperation.

Mcdonald, Trevor

If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

Mead, Margaret

Old age is like flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.

Meir, Golda

Being seventy is not a sin.

Meir, Golda

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

Melville, Herman

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Mencken, H. L.

Not till the fire is dying in the grate, Look we for any kinship with the stars. Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold, And the great price we paid for it full worth: We have it only when we are half earth. Little avails that coinage to the old!

Meredith, George

Don't just count your years, make your years count.

Meyers, Ernest

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!

Milton, John

We are not limited by our old ages; we are liberate by it.

Mittleman, Stu

Minds ripen at very different ages.

Montagu, Elizabeth

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Someday you will read in the papers that Moody is dead. Don't you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I was born of the flesh in 1837, I was born of the spirit in 1855. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit shall live forever.

Moody, Dwight L.

Age does not protect you from love but love to some extent protects you from age.

Moreau, Jeanne

Preparation for old age should begin not later than one's teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.

Morgan, Arthur E.

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

Mortimer, John

I think in twenty years I'll be looked at like Bob Hope. Doing those president jokes and golf shit. It scares me.

Murphy, Eddie

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

Nash, Ogden

In mid-life the man wants to see how irresistible he still is to younger women. How they turn their hearts to stone and more or less commit a murder of their marriage I just don't know, but they do.

Neal, Patricia

The older you get the stronger the wind gets -- and it's always in your face.

Nicklaus, Jack

How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.

Noonan, Peggy

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.

Nuveen, John

When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity -- but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.

Oates, Joyce Carol

Here, with whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down and with only the serenity and the calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be. Hurrah!

O'Casey, Sean

The old -- like children -- talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own!

O'Neill, Eugene

Study until twenty five, investigate until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance.

Osler, Sir William

One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.

Overstreet, Harry A.

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, age don't matter.

Paige, Leroy ''Satchel''

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are.

Paige, Leroy ''Satchel''

You know you're getting old when all the names in your black book have M. D. after them.

Palmer, Arnold

It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily.

Palmer, R.

In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day's long.

Panin, Nikita Ivanovich

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Paul, Jean

Live your life and forget your age.

Peale, Norman Vincent

Age-based retirement arbitrarily severs productive persons from their livelihood, squanders their talents, scars their health, strains an already overburdened Social Security system, and drives many elderly people into poverty and despair. Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism.

Pepper, Claude D.

Getting older is like riding a bicycle, if you don't keep peddling, you'll fall.

Pepper, Claude D.

Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism.

Pepper, Claude D.

A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, At my age, I don't even buy green bananas.

Pepper, Claude D.

Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character.

Perry, Ralph B.

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

Philo

It takes a long time to become young.

Picasso, Pablo

A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.

Pindar

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

Plato

Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many.

Plato

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Pope, Alexander

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.

Powell, Anthony

One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going.

Priestley, J. B.

If the young knew and the old could, there is nothing that couldn't be done.

Proverb

Old age though despised, is coveted by all.

Proverb

We pay when old for the excesses of youth.

Proverb

The woman who tells her age is either too young to have anything to lose or too old to have anything to gain.

Proverb, Chinese

The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.

Proverb, English

An old man loved is winter with flowers.

Proverb, German

Twenty years a child; twenty years running wild; twenty years a mature man --and after that, praying.

Proverb, Irish

Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.

Rahel

Age considers; youth ventures.

Raupach

No one grows old by living. Only by losing interest in living.

Ray, Marie Beyon

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Richards, Keith

As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.

Richter, Jean Paul

Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.

Richter, Jean Paul

Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.

Richter, Jean Paul

Age does not matter if the matter does not age.

Romulo, Carlos Pena

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.

Rostand, Jean

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

Rubinstein, Helena

There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who remain permanently at that age.

Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin

Except ye become as little children, except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God. One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

Schultz, Charles M.

I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.

Selznick, Irene Mayer

As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure if you know how to use it. The gradually declining years are among the sweetest in a man's life, and I maintain that, even when they have reached the extreme limit, they have their pleasure still.

Seneca

There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.

Seneca

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

Senn, J. P.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. [Merchant Of Venice]

Shakespeare, William

Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame.

Shakespeare, William

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; for in my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; and did not, with unbashful forehead, woo the means of weakness and debility: therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly.

Shakespeare, William

Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity?

Shakespeare, William

I have lived long enough. My way of life is to fall into the sere, the yellow leaf, and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends I must not look to have.

Shakespeare, William

I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.

Shakespeare, William

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!

Shakespeare, William

My age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly.

Shakespeare, William

Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Shaw, George Bernard

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Shaw, George Bernard

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

The golden age is before us, not behind us.

Simon, St.

It is a bore, I admit, to be past seventy, for you are left for execution, and are daily expecting the death-warrant; but it is not anything very capital we quit. We are, at the close of life, only hurried away from stomach-aches, pains in the joints, from sleepless nights and unamusing days, from weakness, ugliness, and nervous tremors; but we shall all meet again in another planet, cured of all our defects.

Smith, Sydney

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

Spark, Muriel

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.

Stael, Germaine De

A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living.

Steele, Sir Richard

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.

Steele, Sir Richard

The trick is growing up without growing old.

Stengel, Casey

What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

Stone, I. F.

Age is a high price to pay for maturity.

Stoppard, Tom

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.

Sutzkever, Abraham

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

Swift, Jonathan

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Swift, Jonathan

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

Swift, Jonathan

Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.

Temple, Sir William

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Terence

There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.

Tholuck

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

Thoreau, Henry David

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Thoreau, Henry David

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm

Thoreau, Henry David

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

Thoreau, Henry David

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

Thurber, James

I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40.

Thurber, James

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

Trotsky, Leon

I will never give in to old age until I become old. And I'm not old yet!

Turner, Tina

For the first fourteen years for a rod they do while for the next as a pearl in the world they do shine. For the next trim beauty beginneth to swerve. For the next matrons or drudges they serve. For the next doth crave a staff for a stay. For the next a bier to fetch them away.

Tusser, Thomas

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

Twain, Mark

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

Twain, Mark

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Twain, Mark

Methuselah lived to be 969 years old . You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.

Twain, Mark

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.

Twain, Mark

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.

Twain, Mark

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Ullman, Samuel

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

Ullman, Samuel

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

Ullman, Samuel

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Ullman, Samuel

It is a toss up whether it is worse to be old and bent or young and broke.

Unknown, Source

An old-timer is one who remembers when it cost more to run a car than to park it.

Unknown, Source

If you're starting to look wrinkled, don't worry. It covers the scars.

Unknown, Source

In a few days I'll have lived one score and three days in this vale of tears. On I plod --always bored, often drunk, doing no penance for my faults --rather do I become more tolerant of myself from day to day, hardening my crystal heart with blasphemous humor and shunning only toothpicks, pathos, and poverty as being the three unforgivable things in life.

Unknown, Source

Age withers only the outside.

Unknown, Source

Maturity is that time when the mirrors in our mind turn to windows and instead of seeing the reflection of ourselves we see others.

Unknown, Source

Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations.

Unknown, Source

Old age may seem a long way off. But on the day it doesn't, it will be too late to do anything about it.

Unknown, Source

One of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.

Unknown, Source

Thirty -- the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

Unknown, Source

We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

Unknown, Source

When we are young we take pains to be agreeable, and when we are old we take pains not to be disagreeable.

Unknown, Source

You are young at any age if you are planning for tomorrow.

Unknown, Source

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency.

Updike, John

They are all gone into the world of light, and I alone sit lingering here.

Vaughan, Henry

But it's hard to be hip over thirty when everyone else is nineteen, when the last dance we learned was the Lindy, and the last we heard, girls who looked like Barbara Streisand were trying to do something about it.

Viorst, Judith

Age carries all things away, even the mind.

Virgil

Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.

Voltaire

You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned.

Weldon, Fay

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Wharton, Edith

In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.

White, E(lwyn) B(rooks)

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

Whitman, Walt

O Time and change! -- with hair as gray as was my sire's that winter day, how strange it seems, with so much gone of life and love, to still live on!

Whittier, John Greenleaf

With care, and skill, and cunning art, She parried Time's malicious dart, And kept the years at bay, Till passion entered in her heart and aged her in a day!

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Wilde, Oscar

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

Wilde, Oscar

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Wilde, Oscar

I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.

Wilde, Oscar

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.

Woolf, Virginia

Now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are.

Woolf, Virginia

At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.

Woolf, Virginia

These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

Woolf, Virginia

But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave.

Wordsworth, William

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.

Wordsworth, William

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

Yeats, William Butler

The person of wisdom is the person of years.

Young

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Young, Edward