Aging Quotes - Page 39

• Man is at his furthest remove from the animal as a child, his intellect most human. With his fifteenth year and puberty he comes astep closer to the animal; with the sense of possessions of his thirties (the median line between laziness and greediness), still another step. In his sixtieth year of life he frequently loses his modesty as well, then the septuagenarian steps up to us as a completely unmasked beast: one need only look at the eyes and the teeth.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Children, Eye, Men

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• Everyone desires long life, not one old age.

  Jonathan Swift

  Long, Age, Desire

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• It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they have measured the strength of man. They will not boast; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them have the few poor comforts they can keep. Humility is still a very human virtue. They look back on life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beauty, Humility, Humble

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.110, Delphi Classics

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• The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Growth, Decay

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.251, Xist Publishing

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• As we grow older, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Discipline, Relax, Littles

  Henry David Thoreau (1937). “The selected works of Thoreau”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• After 40, one's face begins to tell more than one's tongue.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Tongue, Faces

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• Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Character, Long, Constitution

  Charles Caleb COLTON (1849). “L.P.”, p.163

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• Though I have many words,
  What woman's satisfied,
  I am no longer faint
  Because at her side?
  O who could have foretold
  That the heart grows old?

  William Butler Yeats

  Women, Heart, Sides

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.27, Hayes Barton Press

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• I thought no more was needed
  Youth to prolong
  Than dumb-bell and foil
  To keep the body young.
  O who could have foretold
  That the heart grows old?

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Sadness, Dumb

  'A Song'

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• I have nothing but the embittered sun;
  Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
  And now that I have come to fifty years
  I must endure the timid sun.

  William Butler Yeats

  Mother, Moon, Reality

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.109, Library of Alexandria

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• Nor bird nor beast
  Could make me wish for anything this day,
  Being old, but that the old alone might die,
  And that would be against God's Providence.

  William Butler Yeats

  Bird, Wish, Would Be

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems: Revised Second Edition”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

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• When a man grows old his joy
  Grows more deep day after day,
  His empty heart is full at length
  But he has need of all that strength
  Because of the increasing Night
  That opens her mystery and fright.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fear, Heart, Night

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

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• O heart, we are old;
  The living beauty is for younger men:
  We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Men, Tears

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “"Easter, 1916" and Other Poems”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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• I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
  Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
  And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
  Till the stars are beginning to blink and peep;
  And the young lie long and dream in their bed.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Stars, Work

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.48, Wordsworth Editions

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• The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
  And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
  Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
  She limps along in an aged whiteness.

  William Butler Yeats

  Eye, Play, Age

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.40, Penguin

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• I thought it out this very day,
  Noon upon the clock,
  A man may put pretence away
  Who leans upon a stick,
  May sing, and sing until he drop,
  Whether to maid or hag.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Noon, Redemption

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

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• When you retire you go from Who's Who to Who's That?

  Walter Wriston

  Retiring

  1985 In the New York Times, 21 Apr.

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• More women grow old nowadays through the faithfulness of their admirers than through anything else.

  Oscar Wilde

  Faithfulness, Admirer, Grows

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (more than 150 Works)”, p.476, e-artnow

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• The child's toys and the old man's reasons are the fruits of two seasons.

  William Blake

  Children, Men, Two

  William Blake (1868). “Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”, p.99

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• Condemned to Hope's delusive mine,
  As on we toil from day to day,
  By sudden blasts or slow decline
  Our social comforts drop away.

  Samuel Johnson

  Toil, Comfort, Social

  'On the Death of Dr Robert Levet' (1783)

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• I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.

  William Shenstone

  Years, People, Causes

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• As an elder I mistrust the wisdom of age.

  Mason Cooley

  Wisdom, Age, Mistrust

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• At sixty, I would like to give my future back its vistas of uncertainty.

  Mason Cooley

  Giving, Vistas, My Future

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• With age, comfort becomes more seductive than beauty.

  Mason Cooley

  Seductive, Age, Comfort

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• The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.

  Mason Cooley

  Vices, Fancy, Youth

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