OLD AGE QUOTES IV
quotations about old age
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After a man passes sixty, his mischief is mainly in his head.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
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Country Town Sayings
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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
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
Man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness. Like that, too, if he continues longer hanging to the stem, it is but an useless and unsightly appendage.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Henry Dearborn, August 17, 1821
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
Old age makes you a stranger in your own country.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Heartbreak House
Once a happy old man
One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
JOHN ASHBERY
"A Last World"
Softly comes Old Age, the thief,
Steals the rapture, leaves the throes.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Scherzo"
The real affliction of old age is remorse.
CESARE PAVESE
The Moon and the Bonfire
As we grow older, we must discipline ourselves to continue expanding, broadening, learning, keeping out minds active and open.
CLINT EASTWOOD
attributed, Sad Sayings
In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Broken Music"
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
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
Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure.
DORIS LESSING
interview, The Progressive, June 1999
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
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
You know you're getting old when your back starts going out more than you do.
PHYLLIS DILLER
Housekeeping Hints
I always liked people who are older. Of course, every year it gets harder to find them.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993