Quotes about age and aging

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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. on age and aging
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"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. on age and aging
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"We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on age and aging
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"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 on age and aging
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"The age of a woman doesn't mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles."

Engel, Sigmund Z. on age and aging
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"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 on age and aging   

"If youth knew; if age could."

Estienne, Henri on age and aging
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"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging
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"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 on age and aging   

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

Fonda, Jane on age and aging   

"Many foxes grow gray but few grow good."

Franklin, Benjamin on age and aging
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"At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment."

Franklin, Benjamin on age and aging
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"If you wouldn't live long, live well; for folly and wickedness shorten life."

Franklin, Benjamin on age and aging
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"An old young man, will be a young old man."

Franklin, Benjamin on age and aging
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"Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."

Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing on age and aging
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"I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old."

Gabriel, Peter on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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. on age and aging   

"Old age is a shipwreck."

Gaulle, Charles De on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on age and aging
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"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 on age and aging
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"The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

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

Greier, John on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

"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. on age and aging   

"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 on age and aging   

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

Hawn, Goldie on age and aging