OLD AGE QUOTES V
quotations about old age
You know you're getting old when your back starts going out more than you do.
PHYLLIS DILLER
Housekeeping Hints
What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
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
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
The real affliction of old age is remorse.
CESARE PAVESE
The Moon and the Bonfire
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
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
I'm like a good cheese. I'm just getting mouldy enough to be interesting.
PAUL NEWMAN
The Guardian, April 10, 2005
Age is never so old as youth would measure it.
JACK LONDON
"The Wit of Porportuk"
The tragedy of old age ... is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected with laughter.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street
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
No man loves life like him that's growing old.
SOPHOCLES
fragment, Acrisius
It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
The Notebook
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Morituri Salutamus"
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
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
T. S. ELIOT
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.
ANDRE GIDE
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
In youth all doors open outward; in old age all open inward.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
This week, a 95-year-old woman married a 98-year-old man to become the world's oldest newlyweds. They're registered at Bed, Sponge Bath and Beyond.
JIMMY FALLON
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, March 2, 2012
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