Old Age Quotes

was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth is past but old age has not yet come.

Ivan Turgenev

Keep the enthusiasm of your youth and treasure the wisdom of old age.

Lailah Gifty Akita

They rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him.

Khaled Hosseini

Moderation is the key to old age and the doorway to boredom

Benny Bellamacina

I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together.

Haruki Murakami

If you don't do anything stupid when you're young, you won't remember something funny when you're old.

Auliq-Ice

I look into my glass,And view my wasting skin,And say, 'Would God it came to passMy heart had shrunk as thin!

Thomas Hardy

One Must Always Remember That Birth, Old Age, Disease And Death Comes At Any Moment In Regardless Of Whom We Are Or What We Have In Forms Of Material Possession.

Baba Tunde Ojo-Olubiyo

Give someone more time and they'll appear to have done more with it.

Kate Morton

A man of forty-five can consider himself still young till the moment comes when he realises that he has children old enough to fall in love.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

No matter who you were in sixteenth-century Europe, you could be sure of two things: you would be lucky to reach fifty years of age, and you could expect a life of discomfort and pain. Old age tires the body by thirty-five, Erasmus lamented, but half the population did not live beyond the age of twenty. There were doctors and there was medicine, but there does not seem to have been a great deal of healing. Anyone who could afford to seek a doctor's aid did so eagerly, but the doctor was as likely to maim or kill as to cure. His potions were usually noxious and sometimes fatal—but they could not have been as terrible and traumatic as the contemporary surgical methods. The surgeon and the Inquisitor differed only in their motivation: otherwise, their batteries of knives, saws, and tongs for slicing, piercing, burning, and amputating were barely distinguishable. Without any anesthetic other than strong liquor, an operation was as bad as the torments of hell.

Philip Ball

Older age has taught one crucial lesson about life. It has taught me that regardless of where I've been I still have much to see and despite every fall I still haven't experienced it all.

Sinister Publications

Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself.

Jean Rhys

Now, it’s time for me to lock up and go. Listen to me. Lock up an empty building that’s gonna be torn down. Makes no sense. Like an old man tellin’ a lie to his son from his death bed. What’s the point? Who besides yourself are you fooling?

Dan Groat

She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her.

Elias Canetti

Old people die not because no one cared for them but because someone they expected care from did not bother.

Vipin Behari Goyal

Oh, once you’ve been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn’t want you back.” Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. “We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman’s memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.

David Mitchell

Old Age- You can tell when you're getting old when you stop taking drugs for fun and start taking them to keep you alive.-character Jackson Rockenberger (Broken)

J. Matthew Nespoli

Time erodes people, and when you are old enough you weigh nothing. It's comforting to know that I will never be as frail.

Maija Haavisto

To flatter a young man, tell him that you thought that he was older than he is. To flatter an old woman, tell her that you thought that she was younger than she is.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears.

Graham Greene

Getting older comes with abilities. Being old comes with disabilities.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The only things that old age comes standard with: grey hair and wrinkles. Wisdom and intellect are earned.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I am a fading phantasmagoria. Time has left me in partial glory."--Fidelis O Mkparu

Fidelis O Mkparu

Old age. I don't know when it really starts, and I'm not interested in finding out. Julia pretty much ignored the whole thing, and that may be the only real lesson there is for the end of our days. Just pretend like it isn't happening, until you have no choice but to accept reality. If you're lucky, like Julia, you'll die peacefully in your sleep after having enjoyed a dinner of onion soup.

Karen Karbo

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.

Seneca

the real essence of our lifetime lies in the time of our lives

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

Leon Trotsky

Il arrive un âge où ils ne sont plus séduisants, ni «en forme», comme on dit. Ils ne peuvent plus boire et ils pensent encore aux femmes; seulement ils sont obligés de les payer, d'accepter des quantités de petites compromissions pour échapper à leur solitude. Ils sont bernés, malheureux. C'est ce moment qu'ils choisissent pour devenir sentimentaux et exigeants… J'en ai vu beaucoup devenir ainsi des sortes d'épaves. "A time comes when they are no longer attractive or in good form. They can't drink any more, and they still hanker after women, only then they have to pay and make compromises in order to escape from their loneliness: they have become just figures of fun. They grow sentimental and hard to please. I haveseen many who have gone the same way.

Françoise Sagan

Old age robs you of every last illusion, even the belief in your own goodness.

Jill Ciment

[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.

Donald Hall

I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in my eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing--yes,-- I'm growing old.

John Godfrey Saxe

I Didn't Ask to Be a Senior Citizen (I Was Drafted)

Doug Jensen

I don't see why there should be a point where everyone decides you're too old. I'm not too old, and until I decide I'm too old I'll never be too fucking old.

Lemmy Kilmister

The cancer set into her bones and whittled her down to nothing. The weariness of the world and the weight in her heart laid her to rest in January.

Rachel Autumn Deering

Old age is catching up with me, or am I catching up with it?

Stanley Victor Paskavich

Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God. (Although there’s no question a belief in God would come in handy. It would be great to think there’s a plan, and that everything happens for a reason. I don’t happen to believe that. And every time one of my friends says to me, “Everything happens for a reason,” I would like to smack her.)

Nora Ephron

We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double homicide, we could lie in bed together, holding hands again, frightened and waiting, still wondering, after all these years, if we even believed in our own souls.

Timothy Schaffert

Late-Flowering LustMy head is bald, my breath is bad,Unshaven is my chin,I have not now the joys I hadWhen I was young in sin.I run my fingers down your dressWith brandy-certain aimAnd you respond to my caressAnd maybe feel the same.But I've a picture of my ownOn this reunion night,Wherein two skeletons are shewnTo hold each other tight;Dark sockets look on emptinessWhich once was loving-eyed,The mouth that opens for a kissHas got no tongue inside.I cling to you inflamed with fearAs now you cling to me,I feel how frail you are my dearAnd wonder what will be--A week? or twenty years remain?And then--what kind of death?A losing fight with frightful painOr a gasping fight for breath?Too long we let our bodies cling,We cannot hide disgustAt all the thoughts that in us springFrom this late-flowering lust.

John Betjeman

The greatest trick you can teach an old dog is how to learn new tricks.

J.S. Davey

After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken.

Margaret Atwood

Old people deserves a medal, a medal of existence which crowns their long-term victory against the cruelty of time and the dangers of this chaotic universe!

Mehmet Murat ildan

For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty.

William S Burroughs

This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else's sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your friends start to die, you can’t get fresh fruit in the shops.

Geoff Ryman

When Lytle was born, the Wright Brothers had not yet achieved a working design. When he died, Voyager 2 was exiting the solar system. What does one do with the coexistence of those details in a lifetime’s view? It weighed on him.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.

Brennan Manning

Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness.Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down - rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen.

Laurie Lee

Old age is not just for grown up's

Benny Bellamacina

One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly.

Glen Cook

An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronising wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

Glen Cook

Embrace the glory of age.

Lailah Gifty Akita

A person gets built and stands for a few years and then nature’s demolition team comes in.

Dan Groat

She looked at his face. So old and wrinkled. So beautiful and just right.

R.J. Lawrence

When we age we shed many skins: ego, arrognace, dominance, self-opionated, unreliable, pessimism, rudeness, selfish, uncaring ... Wow, it's good to be old!

Stephen Richards

The good thing about being old is not being young.

Stephen Richards

WHAT DOES AN OLD MAN GAIN BY EXERCISINGwhat will he gain by talking on the phonewhat will he gain by going after fame, tell mewhat does he gain by looking in the mirrorNothingeach time he just sinks deeper in the mudIt’s already three or four in the morningwhy doesn’t he try to go to sleepbut no--he won’t stop doing exercisewon’t stop with his famous long-distance callswon’t stop with Bachtt with Beethoventttt with Tchaikovskywon’t stop with the long looks in the mirrorwon’t stop with the ridiculous obsession about continuing to breathepitiful--it would be better if he turned out the lightRidiculous old man his mother says to himyou and your father are exactly alikehe didn’t want to die eithermay God grant you the strength to drive a carmay God grant you the strength to talk on the phonemay God grant you the strength to breathe may God grant you the strength to bury your motherYou fell asleep, you ridiculous old man!but the poor wretch does not intend to sleepLet’s not confuse crying with sleeping

Nicanor Parra

Gray hair is the glory of a long life.

Lailah Gifty Akita

I am a fading phantasmagoria. Time has left me in partial glory.

Fidelis O Mkparu

Then his head tipped down on his chest and he fell into the instant sleep of the ancient and the very young.

Louise Erdrich

Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of retirement, I feel it my duty to teach you everything I’ve learnt about love, so listen closely. Love is like… That’s as far as I’ve gotten I’m afraid.

Ben Mitchell

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Old Age Quotes

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