Selected aging quotes

1. I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

2. I have always had plenty of friends, and now at age sixty, I face four walls as a common prisoner.

3. I think that's what makes life interesting - the evolution of getting older, and it's kinda fascinating to me, the whole process.

4. The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they're gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you're going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

5. That's something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

6. The surest sign of age is loneliness.

7. It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

8. Dance on, dance on, we see, we see Youth goes, alack, and with it glee, A boy the old man ne'er can be; Maternal thirty scarce can find The sweet sixteen long left behind.

9. This is serious: some of the things that are supposed to last the rest of my life are already wearing out.

10. The longer I live, the less chance I'll ever recover from what life keeps doing to me.

11. That old bald cheater, Time.

12. People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.

13. I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.

14. I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.

15. Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.

16. Old age is no place for sissies.

17. I'm so old they've cancelled my blood type.

18. Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.

19. Every man has to settle down eventually. You know why you gotta settle down eventually? Because you don't want to be the old guy in the club. You know what I'm talking about. Every club you go into, there's always some old guy. He ain't really old, just a little too old to be in the club.

20. Men don't get smarter when they grow older. They just lose their hair.

21. What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.

22. I now realize that the small hills you see on ski slopes are formed around the bodies of forty-seven-year-olds who tried to learn snowboarding.

23. The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

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

25. 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.

26. For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

27. We see time's furrows on another's brow, And death intrench'd, preparing his assault; How few themselves in that just mirror see!

28. Like our shadows, Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

29. My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.

30. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

31. There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

32. When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.

33. I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was in season, drunk fine claret, slept in my own sheets; I shall live long.

34. Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.

35. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

36. Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

37. Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

38. One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you're too tired.

39. It kills me to be time's eunuch and never to beget.

40. One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.

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

42. As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun. Well, I actually don't feel a day older than 89!

43. Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

44. They pass upon their old, tremulous feet, Creeping with little satchels down the street, And they remember, many years ago, Passing that way in silks. They wander, slow And solitary, through the city ways, And they alone remember those old days Men have forgotten.

45. 'What is care?' asked the Princess, with a smile. 'It is a god', replied the Physician, 'invisible, but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse - it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair grey'.

46. Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.

47. I have this feeling watching Jasmine - that as you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that can go wrong; you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon your life by accidentally feeling too good one day.

48. Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounded like a quiet tragedy.

49. When you're young you always feel that life hasn't yet begun...But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive.

50. We barely have enough time to figure out who we are and then we become bitter and isolated as we age.

51. You only grow old by deserting your ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, giving up wrinkles the soul.

52. The Queen Mother! Bom-bom-bom I'm the queen...The Queen Mother is amazing! She has artificial hips, she has mechanical arms, she has a bionic eye...she cost six million dollars! [Sings Six Million Dollar Man theme tune whilst miming running very slowly and waving like the Queen Mother] dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit Papparazzi, two thousand yards! Dit-dit-dit-dit-dit [resumes theme tune] Off with the tiara! [Mimes throwing tiara like a discus] Sh-d-d-d-pow!

53. The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made; Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become As they draw near to their eternal home. Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new.

54. Las viejas vemos a traves de las paredes.

55. En vieillissant on devient plus fou et plus sage.

56. La vivacite qui augmente en vieillissant ne va pas loin de la folie.

57. Peu de gens savent etre vieux.

58. Il y a peu de femmes dont le merite dure plus que la beaute.

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

60. His golden locks time hath to silver turned; O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing! His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned, But spurned in vain; youth waneth by encreasing.

61. His helmet now shall make a hive for bees, And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms; A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, And feed on prayers, which are old age's alms.

62. 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.

63. At the end of what is called the 'sexual life' the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.

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

65. I feel [I feel] like an old jerk.

66. Even in America, the Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone- but never hustled.

67. The tree of deepest root is found Least willing still to quit the ground; 'Twas therefore said by ancient sages, That love of life increased with years. So much, that in our latter stages, When pains grow sharp and sickness rages, The greatest love of life appears.

68. 'It is hard to spend one's fifteenth Easter away from his native country. If throughout the year of an exile's life one constantly feeds on longing as if it were his daily bread, on solemn holidays this longing becomes doubled and I can think of nothing but my country.[...] I tell you that when my native land loomed closer to me than my old age, I did not care about it [...]; today, when I see my old age closer to me than my country, I feel so much the worse for it.'

69. 'I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago.' 'You promised not to!' 'I couldn't help it. I am a married woman, Peter.'

70. People don't die of old age, they die of neglect.

71. No male can beat a female in the long run because they have it over us in sheer, damn longevity.

72. Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

73. You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.

74. Pour reparer des ans l'irreparable outrage.

75. Age does not make us childish, as they say. It only finds us true children still.

76. It's not that age brings childhood back again, age merely shows what children we remain.

77. Age is a sicknesse, and Youth is an ambush.

78. Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

79. It's amazing when you get to a certain age, and you talk about sleep in the same way you spoke about inebriates 20 or 25 years before. 'Man, I got eight hours last night - it was fantastic.' Happily, I haven't found golf yet, but I'm sure that's just around the corner. (2004)

80. Growing old is unavoidable, but never growing up is possible. I believe you can retain certain things from your childhood if you protect them - certain traits, certain places where you don't let the world go. (2004)

81. There are certain elements of boyhood we can't escape. And farts will always be funny. (2004)

82. For many years they said I was a wild man. Now they say I'm a former wild man, former bad boy, former rebel. I guess 'former' because now I'm a dad. The media tries to stuff you into a mold. It happens to everybody. (2004)

83. Ugliness is better than beauty. It lasts longer and, in the end, gravity will get us all.

84. I'm an old man at fifty-four, without teeth, and with rheumatism.

85. 'One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, 'It was a good show,' when the curtain falls.' (p. 23-24)

86. '...I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death. ...' (p.328 Epilogue)

87. I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.

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

89. There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

90. Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.

91. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

92. I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

93. I have never been a celibate. If people believe so, that is their foolishness. I have always loved women - and perhaps more women than anybody else. You can see my beard: it has become grey so quickly because I have lived so intensely that I have compressed almost two hundred years into fifty.

94. Henry glanced hastily at the mirror. Yes, he did look rather old. He must have overdone some of the lines on his forehead. He looked something between a youngish centenarian and a nonagenarian who had seen a good deal of trouble.

95. A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of having experienced at least that number of very hard winters.

96. Hace falta mucho, mucho tiempo para ser joven.

97. I suppose that the honourable gentleman's hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness.

98. Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.

99. 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.

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