Motivational Quotes

Age and aging

An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

- Galbraith, John Kenneth

Best Quotes about Age and aging

At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.

Gracian, Baltasar

It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem --and in my esteem age is not estimable.

Byron, Lord

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

Hoffer, Eric

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are.

Paige, Leroy ''Satchel''

An old-timer is one who remembers when it cost more to run a car than to park it.

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can't.

Darrow, Clarence

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

Woolf, Virginia

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

10.

Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.

Bierce, Ambrose

11.

We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

12.

As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.

Richter, Jean Paul

13.

I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.

Shakespeare, William

14.

The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you'll grow out of it!

Day, Doris

15.

O what a thing is age! Death without death's quiet.

Landor, Walter Savage

16.

Middle age is when a guy keeps turning off lights for economical rather than romantic reasons.

Cass, Eli

17.

Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.

Richter, Jean Paul

18.

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

Thoreau, Henry David

19.

I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.

Selznick, Irene Mayer

20.

When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity -- but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.

Oates, Joyce Carol

21.

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

22.

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

Cope, Wendy

23.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

Lessing, Doris

24.

It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.

Carr, Emily

25.

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

Philo

26.

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.

Carey, Joyce

27.

Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

28.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Wilde, Oscar

29.

You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned.

Weldon, Fay

30.

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made.

Browning, Robert

31.

How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

Burroughs, John

32.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Eliot, George

33.

In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

Bunuel, Luis

34.

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

35.

At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.

Woolf, Virginia

36.

The disappointment of manhood succeeds the delusion of youth.

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

Hershfield, Harry

38.

Old people love to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being able to set a bad example.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

39.

My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years months days hours or minutes remain that Carpe Diem is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds -- for who can trust to tomorrow?

Byron, Lord

40.

In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day's long.

Panin, Nikita Ivanovich

41.

An aged Christian, with the snow of time upon his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest to heaven.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

42.

Old age is not a disease -- it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.

Kuhn, Maggie

43.

It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily.

Palmer, R.

44.

Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow up.

Edwards, Tryon

45.

The golden age is before us, not behind us.

Simon, St.

46.

The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.

Kronenberger, Louis

47.

Middle age is youth without levity, and age without decay.

Defoe, Daniel

48.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. [Merchant Of Venice]

Shakespeare, William

49.

In a few days I'll have lived one score and three days in this vale of tears. On I plod --always bored, often drunk, doing no penance for my faults --rather do I become more tolerant of myself from day to day, hardening my crystal heart with blasphemous humor and shunning only toothpicks, pathos, and poverty as being the three unforgivable things in life.

50.

Except ye become as little children, except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God. One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again.

Sayers, Dorothy L.