quotations about old age
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
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Heartbreak House
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook K", Aphorisms
I've finally reached the age where my Wild Oats have turned into All-Bran!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, November 19, 1999
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
This week, a 95-year-old woman married a 98-year-old man to become the world's oldest newlyweds. They're registered at Bed, Sponge Bath and Beyond.
JIMMY FALLON
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, March 2, 2012
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
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
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"
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
Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure.
DORIS LESSING
interview, The Progressive, June 1999
It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
The Notebook
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
Before forty we live forwards; after forty we live backwards.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
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
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
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
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"
Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
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