Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Age and aging

One of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.

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

Defoe, Daniel

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

Brookner, Anita

The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.

Proverb, English

Growing old is not growing up.

Horton, Doug

Maturity is that time when the mirrors in our mind turn to windows and instead of seeing the reflection of ourselves we see others.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

Ullman, Samuel

It is a sobering thought, that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years.

Lehrer, Tom

The tendency of old age to the body, say the physiologists, is to form bone. It is as rare as it is pleasant to meet with an old man whose opinions are not ossified.

Boyse, J. F.

10.

Preparation for old age should begin not later than one's teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.

Morgan, Arthur E.

11.

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul.

Maurois, Andre

12.

The short bloom of our brief and narrow life flies far away. While we are calling for flowers and wine and woman, old age is upon us.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

13.

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

14.

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

15.

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

16.

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.

Steele, Sir Richard

17.

To me -- old age is always ten years older than I am.

Buruch, Andre B.

18.

For in all the world there are no people so piteous and forlorn as those who are forced to eat the bitter bread of dependency in their old age, and find how steep are the stairs of another man's house. Wherever they go they know themselves unwelcome. Wherever they are, they feel themselves a burden. There is no humiliation of the spirit they are not forced to endure. Their hearts are scarred all over with the stabs from cruel and callous speeches.

Dix, Dorothy

19.

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

20.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick

Yeats, William Butler

21.

Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, Why not? and the other, Why bother?

Harris, Sidney J.

22.

But it's hard to be hip over thirty when everyone else is nineteen, when the last dance we learned was the Lindy, and the last we heard, girls who looked like Barbara Streisand were trying to do something about it.

Viorst, Judith

23.

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

Day, Doris

24.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

Carlyle, Thomas

25.

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

26.

Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, just in case, in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.

Herzen, Alexander

27.

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

Shakespeare, William

28.

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

Cass, Eli

29.

We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.

Beckett, Samuel

30.

There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.

Seneca

31.

Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.

Richter, Jean Paul

32.

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

Auden, W. H.

33.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

34.

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

Palmer, R.

35.

If youth knew; if age could.

Estienne, Henri

36.

Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.

Greer, Germaine

37.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Baruch, Bernard M.

38.

You are young at any age if you are planning for tomorrow.

39.

The surest sign of age is loneliness.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

40.

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

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

41.

At last now you can be what the old cannot recall and the young long for in dreams, yet still include them all.

Jennings, Elizabeth

42.

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

Burroughs, John

43.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Ullman, Samuel

44.

Age does not protect you from love but love to some extent protects you from age.

Moreau, Jeanne

45.

Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

Hoffer, Eric

46.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

By the time you're eighty years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it.

Burns, George

48.

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.

Child, Lydia M.

49.

If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

Mead, Margaret

50.

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

Arden, Elizabeth