Old Age Quotes - Page 12

• If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Age, Youth

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1968). “Selected Poetry and Prose of Robert Louis Stevenson”

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• We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.

  William Hazlitt

  Attachment, Long, Age

  William Hazlitt (1859). “Table talk”, p.7

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• Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Song, Dying, Age

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (2008). “Early Poems”, p.62, Courier Corporation

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• For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.

  May Sarton

  Self Confidence, Age, Weakness

  May Sarton (2014). “Kinds of Love: A Novel”, p.181, Open Road Media

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• Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the least resources, especially with which to meet frustration.

  May Sarton

  Frustration, Age, Growing

  May Sarton (2014). “The House by the Sea: A Journal”, p.91, Open Road Media

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• It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.

  May Sarton

  Age, Assuming, Easy

  May Sarton (2014). “The House by the Sea: A Journal”, p.16, Open Road Media

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• ...there is no old age of the soul.

  Saul Bellow

  Soul, Age, Aging

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• We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits.

  Rebecca West

  Thinking, Later In Life, Hands

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.382, Open Road Media

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• I find in old age that it's possible to revisit the past, the one requirement being that you come as you are.

  Robert Breault

  Past, Age, Requirements

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• No one's so old that he mayn't with decency hope for one more day.

  Seneca the Younger

  Age, One More Day, Decency

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• Death laughs when old women frolic.

  Publilius Syrus

  Laughing, Age, Old Woman

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• Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Long, Age

  'Thoughts on Various Subjects' (1706)

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• Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits.

  Thomas Browne

  Age, Habit, Rectify

  Sir Thomas Browne (1835). “Sir Thomas Browne's Works: Religio medici. Pseudodoxia epidemica, books 1-4”, p.61

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• Too chaste an adolescence makes for a dissolute old age. It is doubtless easier to give up something one has known than something one imagines.

  Andre Gide

  Giving Up, Age, Imagine

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• Another secret we carry is that though drab outside - wreckage to the eye, mirrors a mortification - inside we flame with a wild life that is almost incommunicable.

  Florida Scott-Maxwell

  Eye, Mirrors, Flames

  Florida Scott-Maxwell (2013). “Measure of My Days”, p.21, Knopf

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• Old age is somewhat like dieting. Every day there is less of us to be observed.

  Doris Grumbach

  Age, Dieting

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.9, Open Road Media

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• What fortune teller would ever have had the nerve to predict that the best years of my life would turn out to be my old age?

  Helene Hanff

  Years, Age, Nerves

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• The body, after all, older and wiser than soul, being first created, and, like a good horse, if given its way would go home by the best path and at the right pace.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Horse, Home, Soul

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

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• The search of the Holy Grail or the voyage towards a new continent never enlisted so much energy and so much faith as does this pursuit of youth by old age. It is a race not of the fleet but of the most credulous.

  Elisabeth Marbury

  Race, Holy Grail, Age

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• Then there's that 'You're only as old as you feel' business, which is true to a point, but you can't be Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop forever. Sooner or later, dammit, you're old.

  Joan Crawford

  Forever, Age, Lollipop

  Roy Newquist, Joan Crawford (1980). “Conversations with Joan Crawford”

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• We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow.

  Hester Lynch Piozzi

  Rivers, Dancing, Age

  Hester Lynch Piozzi (1861). “Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale)”, p.367

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• Getting old in America ... best to do it somewhere else.

  Nicole Hollander

  America, Somewhere Else, Age

  Nicole Hollander (2007). “Tales of Graceful Aging from the Planet Denial”

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• ... no problem except old age ever vanquished my mother.

  Miles Franklin

  Mother, Age, Problem

  Miles Franklin (2017). “Childhood At Brindabella: My First Ten Years”, p.20, ETT Imprint

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• it is a mistake to talk of the twilight of age, or the blurred sight of old people. The long day grows clearer at its close, and the petty fogs of prejudice which rose between us and our fellows in youth melt away as the sun goes down. At last we see God's creatures as they are.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  Mistake, Twilight, Sight

  Rebecca Harding Davis (1904). “Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography”, p.129, Vanderbilt University Press

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• Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
  Charm'd the small-pox, or chas'd old age away;
  . . . .
  To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
  Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.

  Alexander Pope

  Night, Dancing, Age

  Alexander Pope (1822). “The Works of Alexander Pope”, p.373

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