OLD AGE QUOTES V

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

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


When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past -- and when you're seventy, nearly all of you.

JEAN ANOUILH

Time Remembered

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When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997


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

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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

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The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

T. S. ELIOT

Time Magazine, October 23, 1950

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Before forty we live forwards; after forty we live backwards.

CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM

The Maxims of Marmaduke

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You know you're getting old when your back starts going out more than you do.

PHYLLIS DILLER

Housekeeping Hints

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No man loves life like him that's growing old.

SOPHOCLES

fragment, Acrisius

Tags: Sophocles


Nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to John Vaughan, February 5, 1815

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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

Tags: Thomas Jefferson


Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The Virginians

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Age is never so old as youth would measure it.

JACK LONDON

"The Wit of Porportuk"

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Getting older was definitely preferable to an up close and personal meeting with the Grim Reaper.

JOANN ROSS

No Safe Place

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The solitude in which we are left by the death of our friends is one of the great evils of protracted life. When I look back to the days of my youth, it is like looking over a field of battle. All, all dead! and ourselves left alone midst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Francis Adrian Van Der Kemp, January 11, 1825

Tags: Thomas Jefferson


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

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To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent -- that is to triumph over old age.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Ponkapog Papers

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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

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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

Tags: T. S. Eliot


Old age is fertile terrain for unsettling dreams. To dream of dying is one of the more disconcerting experiences, for you can't be sure that you haven't really died until you have pinched yourself a number of times after waking up: you might just have been experiencing the afterlife.

ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR

"My night with Brigitte Bardot", Spectator, January 18, 2017