Quotes about age-and-aging

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

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

— Walter Savage Landor

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

— Philip Larkin

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

— Doug Larson

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

— Tom Lehrer

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

— Prue Leith

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

— Max Lerner

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.

— Doris Lessing

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.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

— Rush Limbaugh

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.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.

— Sophia Loren

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.

— James Russell Lowell

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

— George Macdonald

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

— George Macdonald

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Groucho Marx

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

— Groucho Marx

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

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

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Andre Maurois

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.

— Vladimir Mayakovsky

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

— Trevor Mcdonald

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.

— Margaret Mead

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

— Golda Meir

Being seventy is not a sin.

— Golda Meir

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

— Herman Melville

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

— H. L. Mencken

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!

— George Meredith

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

— Ernest Meyers

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

— John Milton

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

— Stu Mittleman

Minds ripen at very different ages.

— Elizabeth Montagu

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

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

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

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

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.

— Dwight L. Moody

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

— Jeanne Moreau

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.

— Arthur E. Morgan

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

— John Mortimer

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

— Eddie Murphy

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

— Ogden Nash

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.

— Patricia Neal

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

— Jack Nicklaus

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.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Peggy Noonan

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

— John Nuveen

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!

— Sean O'Casey

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!

— Eugene O'Neill

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

— Sir William Osler

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.

— Harry A. Overstreet

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

— Leroy ''Satchel'' Paige

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

— Leroy ''Satchel'' Paige

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

— Arnold Palmer

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

— R. Palmer

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

— Nikita Ivanovich Panin

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

— Jean Paul

Live your life and forget your age.

— Norman Vincent Peale

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.

— Claude D. Pepper

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

— Claude D. Pepper

Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism.

— Claude D. Pepper

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.

— Claude D. Pepper

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.

— Ralph B. Perry

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.

— Pablo Picasso

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.

— Alexander Pope

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

— Anthony Powell

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

— J. B. Priestley

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.

— Chinese Proverb

The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.

— English Proverb

An old man loved is winter with flowers.

— German Proverb

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

— Irish Proverb

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.

— Marie Beyon Ray

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

— Keith Richards

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

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.

— Jean Paul Richter

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

— Jean Paul Richter

Age does not matter if the matter does not age.

— Carlos Pena Romulo

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

— Jean Rostand

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

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

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.

— Helena Rubinstein

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

— Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

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

— Arthur Schopenhauer