OLD AGE QUOTES V

quotations about old age

Old Age quote

After a man passes sixty, his mischief is mainly in his head.

EDGAR WATSON HOWE

Country Town Sayings

Tags: Edgar Watson Howe


Old age is gentle as an autumn morn;
The harvest over, you will put the plough
Into another, stronger hand, and watch
The sowing you were wont to do.

CARMEN SYLVA

"A Friend"

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

PHYLLIS DILLER

Housekeeping Hints

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Old age makes you a stranger in your own country.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

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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

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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

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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

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

CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM

The Maxims of Marmaduke

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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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If youth and manhood have been passed right, old age will be the happiest time of our worldly existence; and happy the man that can look back on the track he trod and feel no passing pain, no pang of bitter remorse. There's honor in the hoary head of three-score-years-and-ten, and a crown of glory sitting on the silvery locks of the Christian pilgrim nigh his journey's end. Without one dread, without a fear, he views the grave as, in former years, he viewed his couch, knowing that on the morning of eternity, he viewed his couch, knowing that on the morning of eternity he will rise from it, born afresh to live for ever, a life where there are no clouds or sorrow, no desponding hours, no moments of trial nor heartrending woe; but an everlasting succession of days of brightness and perfected happiness in the Paradise of the blest. The happiest days on earth are the last days of the aged Christian; then let us strive to make our last end like his, to die the death of the righteous, for in their death we behold the truth of Christianity, and the unequalled earthly glory of a ripe old age.

T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH

"On Old Age", Short Essays


Age is never so old as youth would measure it.

JACK LONDON

"The Wit of Porportuk"

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In youth all doors open outward; in old age all open inward.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk

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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

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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


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


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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