OLD AGE QUOTES III

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

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


Age is information failure. The body loses fluency.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


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


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


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


You read the past in some old faces.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The Virginians

Tags: William Makepeace Thackeray


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


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 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


It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede

Tags: George Eliot


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


There's a reason humans peg-out around eighty: prose fatigue. It looks like organ failure or cancer or stroke but it's really just the inability to carry on clambering through the assault course of mundane cause and effect.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf

Tags: Glen Duncan


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


Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.

J. K. ROWLING

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Tags: J. K. Rowling


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

Tags: David Letterman


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


In youth all doors open outward; in old age all open inward.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk

Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


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


Few know how to be old.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Tags: Francois de La Rochefoucauld