OLD AGE QUOTES IV
quotations about old age
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 is perplexing to imagine in part because the definition of it is notoriously unstable. As people age, they tend to move the goalposts that mark out major life stages.
CERIDWEN DOVEY
"What Old Age Is Really Like", The New Yorker, October 1, 2015
Before forty we live forwards; after forty we live backwards.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.
EURIPIDES
Alcestis
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
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
Until thirty we live through curiosity, after that out of sheer spite and bravado.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf,
Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child,
As a dream set afloat in the daylight.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
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
Old age ought to be, and essentially is a manifestation of what is hidden in the depths of man's nature. It might be, it should be, not an exhibition of crackling impotence and gloomy decay, but the very crown and ripening of life--the symbol of maturity, not of dissolution.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Few know how to be old.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
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
As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new, and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
'Neath every one a friend.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Sixty-eighth Birthday
Old age makes you a stranger in your own country.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
No man loves life like him that's growing old.
SOPHOCLES
fragment, Acrisius
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
Age is information failure. The body loses fluency.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
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
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
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