OLD AGE QUOTES VI
quotations about old age
The most valuable result of many years is a nicely balanced mind instinctively heedful of various errors.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
You know you're old if they have discontinued your blood type.
PHYLLIS DILLER
attributed, Women Know Everything!: 3,241 Quips, Quotes & Brilliant Remarks
Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.
PHILIP ROTH
Everyman
Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.
PHILIP ROTH
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography
All would live long, but none would be old.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1749
Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
A graceful and blessed old age must have three elements in it: a happy retrospect, a peaceful present, and an inspiring future. And old age cannot have either one of these three if the youth has been wasted and manhood has been misspent.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.
ERMA BOMBECK
Family: The Ties that Bind ... And Gag!
You know you're getting older when you notice that more and more history questions happened in your lifetime!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, July 3, 1999
The counsels of the old, like the winter sun, shine, but give no heat.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
They only name things after you when you're dead or really old.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
speech, April 26, 1999
Amidst all the wonders recorded in holy writ no instance can be produced where a young woman from real inclination has preferred an old man.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, September 30, 1779
When we're young we have faith in what is seen, but when we're old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Winterset
Nobody tells you that old age is going to be s****y. It's a kind of conspiracy.
MIRIAM MARGOLYES
The Guardian, January 28, 2017
Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.
GOLDA MEIR
attributed, The Ultimate Book of Quotations
There's nothing like being old to be sure of everything.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
interview, Index Magazine, 1997
As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
IRVIN D. YALOM
Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death
If I am to tell you how to grow old gracefully, I must tell you at the beginning of life; for no man can grow old gracefully unless he begins early.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
The smile upon the old man's lips, like the last rays of the setting sun, pierces the heart with a sweet and sad emotion. There is still a ray, there is still a smile; but they may be the last.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power--that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought