OLD AGE QUOTES II

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

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

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

Tags: Theodore Roosevelt


There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


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

Childe Harold

Tags: Lord Byron


If you see old age as a time when you stop doing and stay still, you won't get to experience all the joys of being human: discovering, developing, expanding. There is no age at which we must abandon our dreams and surrender our possibilities.

ANDREA BRANDT

"4 Keys to Increase Your Happiness As You Get Older", Psychology Today, February 1, 2017


Suicide is what everyone young thinks they'll do before they get old. But they hardly ever get round to it. They just don't want to commit themselves in that way. When you're young and you look ahead, time ends in mist at twenty-five. 'Old won't happen to me', you say. But old does. Oh, old does. Old always gets you in the end.

MARTIN AMIS

Other People

Tags: Martin Amis


The tragedy of old age ... is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected with laughter.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Main Street

Tags: Sinclair Lewis


The compensation of growing old ... was simply this; that the passion remains as strong as ever, but one has gained -- at last! -- the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence -- the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Mrs. Dalloway

Tags: Virginia Woolf


Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Heartbreak House

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


Sixty feels exactly like 50, with aching feet and more forgetfulness.... But your inside person doesn't age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you've ever been.

ANNE LAMOTT

Salon, November 3, 2014

Tags: Anne Lamott


What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit is Rich

Tags: John Updike


Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook K", Aphorisms

Tags: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

"Broken Music"

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich


The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.

ANDRE GIDE

Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality

Tags: Andre Gide


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"

Tags: John Ashbery


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

Tags: Marcel Proust


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

Moby Dick

Tags: Herman Melville


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

Tags: Nicholas Sparks


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

Tags: Francis Bacon


Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.

J. K. ROWLING

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Tags: J. K. Rowling


Softly comes Old Age, the thief,
Steals the rapture, leaves the throes.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Scherzo"

Tags: James Russell Lowell