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.

— Joseph Addison

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

— Anouk Aimee

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Thomas B. Aldrich

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

— Muhammad Ali

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.

— Hervey Allen

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.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

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

— Elizabeth Arden

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.

— Thomas Arnold

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.

— Thomas Arnold

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

— Fred Astaire

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

— Lady Nancy Astor

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

— Daniel Francois Esprit Auber

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.

— W. H. Auden

Age will not be defied.

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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.

— Francis Bacon

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

— Francis Bacon

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.

— Francis Bacon

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

— Lucille Ball

Old age is the verdict of life.

— Amelia E. Barr

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

— Bernard M. Baruch

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

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.

— Simone De Beauvoir

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

— May L. Becker

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

— Samuel Beckett

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.

— Samuel Beckett

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

— Ingmar Bergman

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

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Josh Billings

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

— Alan Bleasdale

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.

— J. F. Boyse

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

— Anita Brookner

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

— Captain J. Brown

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

— Les Brown

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

— Rita Mae Brown

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

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.

— Robert Browning

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

— Pearl S. Buck

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

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

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.

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

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

— Luis Bunuel

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

— Billie Burke

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

— Billie Burke

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

— Billie Burke

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

— George Burns

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

— George Burns

How can I die? I'm booked.

— George Burns

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

— George Burns

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

— John Burroughs

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

— Andre B. Buruch

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.

— Lord Byron

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.

— Lord Byron

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?

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

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.

— Lord Byron

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

— Lord Byron

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.

— Lord Byron

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

— Joyce Carey

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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.

— Emily Carr

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

— Lillian Carter

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

— Eli Cass

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.

— Edwin Hubbel Chapin

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.

— Lord Chesterfield

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.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

— Maurice Chevalier

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.

— Lydia M. Child

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

— Lydia M. Child

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

— Deepak Chopra

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

— Deepak Chopra

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.

— Deepak Chopra

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Agatha Christie

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

— Winston Churchill

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

— Marcus T. Cicero

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.

— Marcus T. Cicero

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.

— Marcus T. Cicero

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

— Marcus T. Cicero

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

— Marcus T. Cicero

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

— Marcus T. Cicero

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

— Marcus T. Cicero

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.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

— Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

— Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

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

— Mortimer Collins

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Wendy Cope

Age is a matter of feeling, not of years.

— George William Curtis

He is so old that his blood type was discontinued.

— Bill Dana

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.

— Rodney Dangerfield

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.

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Doris Day

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

— Daniel Defoe