OLD AGE QUOTES
quotations about old age
There is no place in which to hide
When Age comes seeking for his bride.
JOYCE KILMER
"Age Comes A-Wooing"
All my life I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.
BILLY GRAHAM
Newsweek, August 14, 2006
There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age: youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.
O. HENRY
"The Count and the Wedding Guest"
The old are in a second childhood.
ARISTOPHANES
The Clouds
Growing old is not the approach of a biological term. It is the ever lengthening spiral which distances you from the physical and intellectual openness of your youth. Eventually, the spiral becomes so long that all chance of return is lost. The parabola becomes eccentric, and the peak of one's life-curve gets lost in space. Simultaneously the echo of pleasure in time becomes shorter. One ceases to find pleasure in pleasure. Things live on in nostalgia, and their echo becomes that of a previous life.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
There's one advantage to being 102. There's no peer pressure.
DENNIS WOLFBERG
Humorous Quotes for All Occasions
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everybody is goin to get older with you.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
No Country for Old Men
I'm eighty-three and homeless. It was the same when World War II ended. The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was "Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?" That what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now? I've wondered where home is. It's when I was in Indianapolis when I was nine years old. Had a dog, a cat, a brother, a sister.
KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
Rolling Stone, August 24, 2006
It must be confessed that life after forty is an anti-climax, gradual indeed, and progressive with some, but steep and rapid with others. It would be well if old age diminished our perceptibilities to pain, in the same proportion that it does our sensibilities to pleasure; and if life has been termed a feast, those favoured few are the most fortunate guests, who are not compelled to sit at the table, when they can no longer partake of the banquet.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
I do not wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite from cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and laughter, and ecstatic tears.
ANNE REEVE ALDRICH
"An Evening With Callender"
When you get old, you can't talk to people because people snap at you.... That's why you become deaf, so you won't be able to hear people talking to you that way.
EDWARD ALBEE
The American Dream
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
LEON TROTSKY
Diary in Exile
I think [aging] has nothing to recommend it. You don't gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you'd trade all of that for being 35 again.
WOODY ALLEN
"Woody Allen on Faith, Fortune Tellers and New York", New York Times, September 14, 2010
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H. L. MENCKEN
Prejudices: Third Series
I truly believe that age -- if you're healthy -- age is just a number.
HUGH HEFNER
interview, April 8, 2006
The Disappointment of Manhood succeeds to the delusion of Youth: let us hope that the heritage of Old Age is not Despair.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Vivian Grey
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Summing Up
If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
MICKEY MANTLE
attributed, The New York Times Story of the Yankees
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
ROBERT BROWNING
Rabbi ben Ezra