Quotes About Old Age

Most popular old age quotes

The point is this: as an old man Barzillai couldn't do everything he once did — but he did what he could, and God used his efforts. The same can be true of us as we grow older. - Billy Graham quote.
The point is this: as an old man Barzillai couldn't do everything he once did — but he did what he could, and God used his efforts. The same can be true of us as we grow older.
Billy Graham Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

God religious

Old age may have its limitations and challenges, but in spite of them our latter years can be some of the most rewarding and fulfilling of our lives. It was for them, and it can be for us. - Billy Graham quote.
Old age may have its limitations and challenges, but in spite of them our latter years can be some of the most rewarding and fulfilling of our lives. It was for them, and it can be for us.
Billy Graham Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

religious

I often wonder if God, in His sovereignty, allows the eyesight of the aged to cast a dim view of the here and now so that we may focus our spiritual eyes on the ever after. - Billy Graham quote.
I often wonder if God, in His sovereignty, allows the eyesight of the aged to cast a dim view of the here and now so that we may focus our spiritual eyes on the ever after.
Billy Graham Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

religious

What testimony are you passing on to others following you? Remembering what God has done for you will invigorate you in old age. Others are watching your actions and attitudes. Don't diminish the impact you can make; pass on foundational truths of God's Word so that younger generations will be as Joshua, "filled with the spirit of wisdom." - Billy Graham quote.
What testimony are you passing on to others following you? Remembering what God has done for you will invigorate you in old age. Others are watching your actions and attitudes. Don't diminish the impact you can make; pass on foundational truths of God's Word so that younger generations will be as Joshua, "filled with the spirit of wisdom."
Billy Graham Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

religious

Even at ninety-two, my desire is to learn to be content. We should never get too old to learn or too old to smile ! - Billy Graham quote.
Even at ninety-two, my desire is to learn to be content. We should never get too old to learn or too old to smile !
Billy Graham Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

learning

No matter who we are, retirement presents us with two choices. Either we can use it to indulge ourselves, or we can use it to make an impact on the lives of others. In other words, the choice we face is between empty self-indulgence and meaningful activity. - Billy Graham quote.
No matter who we are, retirement presents us with two choices. Either we can use it to indulge ourselves, or we can use it to make an impact on the lives of others. In other words, the choice we face is between empty self-indulgence and meaningful activity.
Billy Graham Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

service retirement

Old age is not a total misery. Experience helps. - Euripides quote.
Old age is not a total misery. Experience helps.
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age. - Victor Hugo quote.
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.

grace

Old men are twice children.
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. - Oscar Wilde quote.
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

tragedy

All would live long, but none would be old. - Benjamin Franklin quote.
All would live long, but none would be old.
Not everything connected with old age is bad. - Euripides quote.
Not everything connected with old age is bad.
There are no old people nowadays; they are either 'wonderful for their age' or dead. - Mary Pettibone Poole quote.
There are no old people nowadays; they are either 'wonderful for their age' or dead.
Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes.

childhood

I don't know what the big deal is about old age. Old people who shine from inside look 10 to 20 years younger. - Dolly Parton quote.
I don't know what the big deal is about old age. Old people who shine from inside look 10 to 20 years younger.
Old age is having too much room in the house and not enough in the medicine cabinet.
— Orben’s Current Comedy
Never lose sight of the fact that old age needs so little but needs that little so much.
We've put more effort into helping folks reach old age than into helping them enjoy it.
Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest. - Thomas Huxley quote.
Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.

advice

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do. - Golda Meir quote.
Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. - Henry Ford quote.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth. - W. Somerset Maugham quote.
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas quote.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

death

Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough. - Don Marquis quote.
Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
My only fear is that I may live too long. - Thomas Jefferson quote.
My only fear is that I may live too long.
One of the many pleasures of old age is giving things up. - Malcolm Muggeridge quote.
One of the many pleasures of old age is giving things up.
It is always in season for old men to learn. - Aeschylus quote.
It is always in season for old men to learn.

education

I'll never make the mistake of being 70 again. - Casey Stengel quote.
I'll never make the mistake of being 70 again.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples. - François de La Rochefoucauld quote.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form. - Andre Maurois quote.
Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.
In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
Old boys have their playthings as well as young ones; the difference is only in the price. - Benjamin Franklin quote.
Old boys have their playthings as well as young ones; the difference is only in the price.
To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am. - Bernard Baruch quote.
To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed. - Anthony Powell quote.
Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.

aging

I adore life but I don't fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible. - Georges Simenon quote.
I adore life but I don't fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible.
I know a man so old, he has to use axle grease to keep his legs from creaking' when he walks. - Moms Mabley quote.
I know a man so old, he has to use axle grease to keep his legs from creaking' when he walks.
There ain't nothing an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young one. - Moms Mabley quote.
There ain't nothing an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young one.
Years ago, I thought old age would be dreadful, because I would not be able to do all the things I would want to do. Now I find there is nothing I want to do. - Nancy Astor quote.
Years ago, I thought old age would be dreadful, because I would not be able to do all the things I would want to do. Now I find there is nothing I want to do.
Age wins and one must learn to grow old.
Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle. - Edna Ferber quote.
Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.
I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly, you're as young as you feel.
I never allow myself to be bored because boredom is aging. If you live in the past grow old and dull, and dusty. It's very nice, of course, to be young and beautiful; but then are other qualities. Thank God.
As old as the hills. - Sir Walter Scott quote.
As old as the hills.
It's later than you think. - Robert William Service quote.
It's later than you think.
You're not as young as you used to be but you're not as old as you're going to be.
— Irish Saying

aging proverbs

We grow too soon old and too late smart.
— Pennsylvania Dutch saying

proverbs

What is called the serenity of age is only perhaps a euphemism for the fading power to feel the sudden shock of joy or sorrow.
All of one's contemporaries and aging friends are living in a delicate balance, and one feels that one's own consciousness is no longer as brightly lit as it once was.  But then, twilight with its more subdued colors has its charms as well. - Albert Einstein quote.
All of one's contemporaries and aging friends are living in a delicate balance, and one feels that one's own consciousness is no longer as brightly lit as it once was.  But then, twilight with its more subdued colors has its charms as well.
People had much rather be thought to look ill than old: because it is possible to recover from sickness, but there is no recovering from age. - William Hazlitt quote.
People had much rather be thought to look ill than old: because it is possible to recover from sickness, but there is no recovering from age.
If you survive long enough, you're revered—rather like an old building. - Katherine Hepburn quote.
If you survive long enough, you're revered—rather like an old building.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

passion

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Age's terms of peace, after the long interlude of war with life, have still to be concluded—Youth must be kept decently away—so many old wounds may have to be unbound, and old scars pointed to with pride, to prove to ourselves we have been brave and noble. - Eugene O'Neill quote.
Age's terms of peace, after the long interlude of war with life, have still to be concluded—Youth must be kept decently away—so many old wounds may have to be unbound, and old scars pointed to with pride, to prove to ourselves we have been brave and noble.
When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn. - Ovid quote.
When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn.
Ovid The Art of Love
The country of the aged is a land few people think very hard and seriously about before the time of life when they sense they're arriving there.
And what would it be to grow old?  For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through. - Robert Louis Stevenson quote.
And what would it be to grow old?  For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through.
In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. - Edith Wharton quote.
In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

curiosity illness

I am not well; I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement, battered by the winds and broken in upon by the storms; and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair. - John Adams quote.
I am not well; I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement, battered by the winds and broken in upon by the storms; and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent—that is to triumph over old age. - Thomas Bailey Aldrich quote.
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent—that is to triumph over old age.
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. - Isaac Asimov quote.
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight.

youth & age

Old age is the verdict of life. - Amelia E. Barr quote.
Old age is the verdict of life.
A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window. - Henry Ward Beecher quote.
A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window.
It is as natural for old age to be frail, as for the stalk to bend under the ripened ear, or for the autumnal leaf to change its hue.  To this law all who went before you have submitted; and all who shall come after you must yield.  After they have flourished for a season, they shall fade, like you, when the period of decline arrives, and bow under the pressure of years. - Hugh Blair quote.
It is as natural for old age to be frail, as for the stalk to bend under the ripened ear, or for the autumnal leaf to change its hue.  To this law all who went before you have submitted; and all who shall come after you must yield.  After they have flourished for a season, they shall fade, like you, when the period of decline arrives, and bow under the pressure of years.
With full-span lives having become the norm, people may need to learn how to be aged as they once had to learn how to be adult.
Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft. - Ray Bradbury quote.
Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft.
The man who works and is not bored is never old.
Pablo Casals Song of the Birds: Sayings, Stories, and Impressions of Pablo Casals

work

Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative. - Maurice Chevalier quote.
Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.
Avarice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end? - Cicero quote.
Avarice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end?

avarice

As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an aged face. - Joseph Campbell quote.
As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an aged face.
One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave. - Colette quote.
One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life.  Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny. - Simone de Beauvoir quote.
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life.  Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny.

parody destiny

Old age was growing inside me.  It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror.  I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it. - Simone de Beauvoir quote.
Old age was growing inside me.  It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror.  I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.
Old age is a shipwreck. - General Charles DeGaulle quote.
Old age is a shipwreck.
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face. - John Donne quote.
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.

grace

Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked. - Lawrence Durrell quote.
Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.
Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man. - Felix Frankfurter quote.
Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

illness

Old age is somewhat like dieting.  Every day there is less of us to be deserved.
Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.
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. - Eric Hoffer quote.
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.
Love, the last defense against old age. - Aldous Huxley quote.
Love, the last defense against old age.

love

Old age on a good day is a dance we don't know the steps to: we falter. - Anne Lamott quote.
Old age on a good day is a dance we don't know the steps to: we falter.
Anne Lamott Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
The reality of old age starts to sink in when you no longer have to ask for the senior citizen's discount. - Doug Larson quote.
The reality of old age starts to sink in when you no longer have to ask for the senior citizen's discount.
In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote.
In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

skill

Old age is a tyrant who forbids, upon pain of death, all of the pleasures of youth. - François de La Rochefoucauld quote.
Old age is a tyrant who forbids, upon pain of death, all of the pleasures of youth.
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude. - Gabriel Garcia Marquez quote.
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

solitude

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek.  I am amazed no longer.  Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. - W. Somerset Maugham quote.
When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek.  I am amazed no longer.  Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

youth & age

The last act is bloody, however delightful the rest of the play may be. - Blaise Pascal quote.
The last act is bloody, however delightful the rest of the play may be.

life

It is easier to counterfeit old age than youth.
Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score. - Alexander Pope quote.
Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score.
For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of harvest.
— Jewish proverb

proverbs Jewish proverbs

Old age isn't a battle. Old age is a massacre. - Philip Roth quote.
Old age isn't a battle. Old age is a massacre.
For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was. - May Sarton quote.
For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.
Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light. - May Sarton quote.
Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light.
I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward. - May Sarton quote.
I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward.
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force. - Dorothy L. Sayers quote.
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Old age is an incurable disease. - Seneca quote.
Old age is an incurable disease.
Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go. - B. F. Skinner quote.
Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go.
There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation. - Logan Pearsall Smith quote.
There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation.
One evil in old age is, that as your time is come, you think that every little illness is the beginning of the end.  When a man expects to be arrested, every knock at the door is an alarm. - Sydney Smith quote.
One evil in old age is, that as your time is come, you think that every little illness is the beginning of the end.  When a man expects to be arrested, every knock at the door is an alarm.
Sydney Smith A Memoir of The Reverend Sydney Smith: by His Daughter

illness

Old age is an illness in itself. - Terence quote.
Old age is an illness in itself.

illness

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas quote.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man. - Leon Trotsky quote.
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. - Mark Twain quote.
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

hope health

I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road. - Mark Twain quote.
I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.
Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself—a lad of about nineteen. - E. B. White quote.
Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself—a lad of about nineteen.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick. - W. B. Yeats quote.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick.
Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine. - Austin O'Malley quote.
Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine.

religion

The pleasures of youth are the pains of old age, just as the pleasures of old age are the pains of youth.

youth