OLD AGE QUOTES IV

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

Old age is particularly difficult to assume because we have always regarded it as something alien, a foreign species.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


If youth and manhood have been passed right, old age will be the happiest time of our worldly existence; and happy the man that can look back on the track he trod and feel no passing pain, no pang of bitter remorse. There's honor in the hoary head of three-score-years-and-ten, and a crown of glory sitting on the silvery locks of the Christian pilgrim nigh his journey's end. Without one dread, without a fear, he views the grave as, in former years, he viewed his couch, knowing that on the morning of eternity, he viewed his couch, knowing that on the morning of eternity he will rise from it, born afresh to live for ever, a life where there are no clouds or sorrow, no desponding hours, no moments of trial nor heartrending woe; but an everlasting succession of days of brightness and perfected happiness in the Paradise of the blest. The happiest days on earth are the last days of the aged Christian; then let us strive to make our last end like his, to die the death of the righteous, for in their death we behold the truth of Christianity, and the unequalled earthly glory of a ripe old age.

T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH

"On Old Age", Short Essays


We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones ...

GRAMPA SIMPSON

"Last Exit to Springfield", The Simpsons


Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure.

DORIS LESSING

interview, The Progressive, June 1999

Tags: Doris Lessing


Few know how to be old.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Tags: Francois de La Rochefoucauld


Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf,
Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child,
As a dream set afloat in the daylight.

AESCHYLUS

Agamemnon

Tags: Aeschylus


When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past -- and when you're seventy, nearly all of you.

JEAN ANOUILH

Time Remembered

Tags: Jean Anouilh


It would be a good appendix to the Art of Living and Dying, if any one would write the Art of Growing Old, and teach men to resign their pretensions to the pleasures and gallantries of youth, in proportion to the alteration they find in themselves by the approach of age and infirmities. The infirmities of this stage of life would be much fewer, if we did not affect those which attend the more vigorous and active part of our days; but, instead of studying to be wiser, or being contented with our present follies, the ambition of many of us is also to be the same sort of fools we formerly have been.

JOSEPH ADDISON

The Tatler, December 21, 1710

Tags: Joseph Addison


What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.

ROBERT BROWNING

"Jochanan Hakkadosh"

Tags: Robert Browning


The real affliction of old age is remorse.

CESARE PAVESE

The Moon and the Bonfire

Tags: Cesare Pavese


How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep ... that have taken hold.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

The Return of the King

Tags: J. R. R. Tolkien


Nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to John Vaughan, February 5, 1815

Tags: Thomas Jefferson


The old are apt to mistake age for experience, and to imagine they are privileged to give good advice, though they may have lived only to afford bad example.

NORMAN MACDONALD

Maxims and Moral Reflections

Tags: Norman MacDonald


Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.

TRACY LETTS

August: Osage Country

Tags: Tracy Letts


Getting older was definitely preferable to an up close and personal meeting with the Grim Reaper.

JOANN ROSS

No Safe Place

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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

Sixty-eighth Birthday

Tags: James Russell Lowell


Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.

EURIPIDES

Alcestis

Tags: Euripides


No man loves life like him that's growing old.

SOPHOCLES

fragment, Acrisius

Tags: Sophocles


There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not anymore. Now I'm startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never at all the one that I expect. I have been elbowed aside by a parody of myself, a sadly dishevelled figure in a Halloween mask made of sagging, pinkish- grey rubber that bears no more than a passing resemblance to the image of what I look like that I stubbornly retain in my head.

JOHN BANVILLE

The Sea

Tags: John Banville


Oft am I by the Women told,
Poor Anacreon, thou grow'st old,
Look how thy hairs are falling all;
Poor Anacreon how they fall.
Whether I grow old or no,
By th' Effects I do not know.
This I know without being told,
'Tis time to Live, if I grow Old.
'Tis time short Pleasures now to take;
Of little Life the best to make,
And manage wisely the last Stake.

ANACREON

"Ode X", Odes

Tags: Anacreon