OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, The Summing Up
No man loves life like him that's growing old.
SOPHOCLES, Acrisius [fragment]
The old are in a second childhood.
ARISTOPHANES, The Clouds
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
ROBERT BROWNING, Rabbi ben Ezra
When we're young we have faith in what is seen, but when we're old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water.
MAXWELL ANDERSON, Winterset
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
There's one advantage to being 102. There's no peer pressure.
DENNIS WOLFBERG, Humorous Quotes for All Occasions
All my life I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.
BILLY GRAHAM, Newsweek, Aug. 14, 2006
I do not wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite from cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and laughter, and ecstatic tears.
ANNE REEVE ALDRICH, "An Evening With Callender"
I truly believe that age -- if you're healthy -- age is just a number.
HUGH HEFNER, interview, Apr. 8, 2006
I'm eighty-three and homeless. It was the same when World War II ended. The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was "Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?" That what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now? I've wondered where home is. It's when I was in Indianapolis when I was nine years old. Had a dog, a cat, a brother, a sister.
KURT VONNEGUT, JR., Rolling Stone, Aug. 24, 2006
Once a happy old man
One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
JOHN ASHBERY, "A Last World"
There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age: youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.
O. HENRY, "The Count and the Wedding Guest"
The Disappointment of Manhood succeeds to the delusion of Youth: let us hope that the heritage of Old Age is not Despair.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Vivian Grey
Amidst all the wonders recorded in holy writ no instance can be produced where a young woman from real inclination has preferred an old man.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, Sep. 30, 1779
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H.L. MENCKEN, Prejudices: Third Series
It is because the old have forgotten life that they preach wisdom.
PHILIP MOELLER, Helena's Husband
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
LEON TROTSKY, Diary in Exile
They only name things after you when you're dead or really old.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, speech, Apr. 26, 1999
When you get old, you can't talk to people because people snap at you.... That's why you become deaf, so you won't be able to hear people talking to you that way.
EDWARD ALBEE, The American Dream
What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from life's page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
LORD BYRON, Childe Harold
If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
MICKEY MANTLE
As we grow older, we must discipline ourselves to continue expanding, broadening, learning, keeping out minds active and open.
CLINT EASTWOOD
And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain,
I’ll state my case of which I’m certain.
I’ve lived a life that’s full, I traveled each and ev’ry highway,
And more, much more than this. I did it my way.
FRANK SINATRA, My Way (lyrics by Paul Anka)
