OLD AGE QUOTES V

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

Until thirty we live through curiosity, after that out of sheer spite and bravado.

ABRAHAM MILLER

Unmoral Maxims

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What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.

ROBERT BROWNING

"Jochanan Hakkadosh"

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

JEAN ANOUILH

Time Remembered

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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

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And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain,
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.
I've lived a life that's full, I traveled each and ev'ry highway,
And more, much more than this. I did it my way.

FRANK SINATRA

My Way

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I always liked people who are older. Of course, every year it gets harder to find them.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

The Paris Review, summer 1993

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I used to think I preferred getting old to the alternative, but now I'm not sure. Sometimes the monotony of bingo and sing-alongs and ancient dusty people parked in the hallway in wheelchairs makes me long for death. Particularly when I remember that I'm one of the ancient dusty people, filed away like some worthless tchotchke.

SARA GRUEN

Water for Elephants

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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

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Old age makes you a stranger in your own country.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

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Old age ought to be, and essentially is a manifestation of what is hidden in the depths of man's nature. It might be, it should be, not an exhibition of crackling impotence and gloomy decay, but the very crown and ripening of life--the symbol of maturity, not of dissolution.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words

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The art of growing old is the art of being regarded by the oncoming generations as a support and not as a stumbling-block.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

An Art of Living

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The solitude in which we are left by the death of our friends is one of the great evils of protracted life. When I look back to the days of my youth, it is like looking over a field of battle. All, all dead! and ourselves left alone midst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Francis Adrian Van Der Kemp, January 11, 1825

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The world's oldest woman passed away at 116. They keep dying. I think that title may be cursed.

DAVID LETTERMAN

Late Show with David Letterman, December 18, 2012

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

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Ponkapog Papers

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The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

T. S. ELIOT

Time Magazine, October 23, 1950

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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

The Coming of Age

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Society often sends the message that old age is just a waiting room for the end--either elderly people are weak, sick, and irrelevant or that old age is all about meaningless recreation.

ANDREA BRANDT

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


When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997


You know you're getting old when your back starts going out more than you do.

PHYLLIS DILLER

Housekeeping Hints

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Old age is fertile terrain for unsettling dreams. To dream of dying is one of the more disconcerting experiences, for you can't be sure that you haven't really died until you have pinched yourself a number of times after waking up: you might just have been experiencing the afterlife.

ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR

"My night with Brigitte Bardot", Spectator, January 18, 2017