Old Age Quotes - Page 17

• It would not be worth your while to reach the age of seventy if all the wisdom of the world were to be foolishness before God.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Wisdom, Age, World

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• The fear of old age is something that one feels when they're younger. Once you get to being old, you're already there, so you don't even think about it anymore.

  Paolo Sorrentino

  Thinking, Age, Old You

  "Director's Cut: Paolo Sorrentino ('The Great Beauty')". Interview with David Ehrlich, www.mtv.com. November 14, 2013.

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• I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Self, Age, Lifetime

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• And if I should live to be
  The last leaf upon the tree
  In the spring,
  Let them smile, as I do now,
  At the old forsaken bough
  Where I cling.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Spring, Tree, Age

  "The Last Leaf " l. 43 (1831)

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• I had a chair at every hearth,
  When no one turned to see,
  With 'Look at that old fellow there,
  'And who may he be?

  William Butler Yeats

  Age, May, Looks

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.136, Penguin

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• A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, Growing Up, Men

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• It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fashion, Thinking, Elderly

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• Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I shall remain so. I have but one prayer at heart; and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last.

  Lydia M. Child

  Prayer, Heart, People

  Letter to Harriet Seward, 1869.

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• And now I'm old and going--I'm sure I can't tell where;
  One comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there

  Charles Kingsley

  Age, Comfort, World

  Charles Kingsley (1858). “Andromeda: And Other Poems”, p.94

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• All-devouring time, envious age,
  Nought can escape you, and by slow degrees,
  Worn by your teeth, all things will lingering die.

  Ovid

  Time, Age, Degrees

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• We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.

  Thomas Paine

  Justice, Age, Extravagance

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AGE OF REASON - Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (Including “The Life of Thomas Paine”): Deistic Critique of Bible and Christian Church”, p.350, e-artnow

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• You will perceive by my preaching that I am growing old: it is the privilege of years, and I am sure you will pardon it from the purity of it's motives.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Years, Age, Growing

  Thomas Jefferson, Lyman Henry Butterfield (1954). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 November, 1785 to 22 June, 1786”

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• It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

  Louise Bogan

  Life, Writing, Poetry

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• I'm just an old man and I smell bad, remember?

  Stanley Kubrick

  Men, Smell, Rejection

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• Old men, imagining themselves under obligation to young paramours, seldom keep any thing from their knowledge.

  Samuel Richardson

  Men, Age, Imagine

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• Do old people always live in the past? What yesterday was firm and true, may not be so today.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Truth, Past, Yesterday

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• Youth is rather to be pitied than envied by people in years since it is doomed to toil through the rugged road of life which the others have passed through, in search of happiness that is not to be met with in it and that, at the highest, can be compounded for only by the blessing of a contented mind.

  Samuel Richardson

  Happiness, Blessing, Years

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• The young break rules for fun. The old for profit.

  Mason Cooley

  Fun, Broken, Age

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• Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age, but the heart can.

  Jean Paul

  Memories, Heart, Age

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• Old age and youth cannot live together.

  Christina Stead

  Age, Together, Youth

  Christina Stead (1945). “For Love Alone”, p.116, The Miegunyah Press

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• Old age is
  a flight of small
  cheeping birds
  skimming
  bare trees
  above a snow glaze.

  William Carlos Williams

  Snow, Bird, Tree

  William Carlos Williams (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams”, p.152, New Directions Publishing

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• In middle age, I practiced feeling old, but the real thing has been a rude surprise.

  Mason Cooley

  Real, Rude, Feelings

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• Old age learns about less after a lifetime of more.

  Mason Cooley

  Age, Lifetime

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• Old men feel a slightly reluctant affection for one another.

  Mason Cooley

  Men, Age, Affection

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• The essence of age is intellect. Wherever that appears, we call it old.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Essence, Age, Intellect

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.160, Harvard University Press

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