Old Age Quotes - Page 28

• You read the past in some old faces.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Past, Age, Faces

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1870). “The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century”, p.151

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• Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Running, Memories, Selfish

  William Makepeace Thackeray (2008). “The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.353, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power--that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Age, Demand, Revision

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1871). “Summaries of Thought”

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• Nature abhors the old.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Age, Growing Old

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2014). “The Portable Emerson”, p.159, Penguin

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• He that dies in extreme old age will be reduced to the same state with him that is cut down untimely.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Cutting, Age, States

  "Meditations". Book by Marcus Aurelius. Book IX, 33,

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• The fear of old age disturbs us, yet we are not certain of becoming old.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Age, Becoming, Certain

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• White hair often covers the head, but the heart that holds it is ever young.

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Hair, White

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Lily of the Valley”, p.152, The Floating Press

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• The Guide sang:
  The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought,
  And fools crying,
  Because it has begun It will continue as it has begun!
  The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run
  Faster for ever,
  The old age is done,
  We have new lights and see without the sun.
  (Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea,
  Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Art, Light

  "The Pilgrim's Regress". Book by C. S. Lewis, pp. 186-187, 1933.

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• 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

  Dog, Brother, War

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• Few know how to be old.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Age, Know How, Knows

  "The Moral Maxims and Reflections". Book by François de La Rochefoucauld. Maxim 423, 1678.

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• The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.

  Andre Gide

  Perseverance, Men, Hands

  Andre Gide (2017). “Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality”, p.289, Routledge

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• It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Mind, Age

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished”, p.245

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• Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.

  Jacques Barzun

  Age, Profession

  "Age of Reason". The New Yorker, (p. 103), October 22, 2007.

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• Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf, Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child, As a dream set afloat in the daylight.

  Aeschylus

  Dream, Children, Men

  Aeschylus (2014). “The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides”, p.5, Everyman's Library

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• Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth.

  Aeschylus

  Age, Stronger, Youth

  Aeschylus (1873). “The Tragedies of Æschylos: A New Translation, with a Biographical Essay, and an Appendix of Rhymed Choral Odes”, p.342

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• Nothing makes you look older than attempting to look young.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Age, Looks, Attempting

  "Karl Lagerfeld Gives His Best Quote About Plastic Surgery Yet" By Jamie Feldman, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 13, 2014.

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• The world's oldest woman passed away at 116. They keep dying. I think that title may be cursed.

  David Letterman

  Thinking, Dying, Age

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• Christina Stead has a Chinese say, "Our old age is perhaps life's decision about us" or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.

  Randall Jarrell

  Decision, Chinese, Age

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "An Unread Book", p. 42, 1969.

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• Never say you are too old. You do not say it now, perhaps; but by and by, when the hair grows gray and the eyes grow dim and the young despair comes to curse the old age, you will say, "It is too late for me." Never too late! Never too old! How old are you--thirty, fifty, eighty? What is that in immortality? We are but children.

  Lyman Abbott

  Children, Eye, Hair

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• A graceful and blessed old age must have three elements in it: a happy retrospect, a peaceful present, and an inspiring future. And old age cannot have either one of these three if the youth has been wasted and manhood has been misspent.

  Lyman Abbott

  Blessed, Peaceful, Age

  Ernest Hamlin Abbott, Lyman Abbott, Francis Rufus Bellamy, Hamilton Wright Mabie (1898). “The Outlook”

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• If I am to tell you how to grow old gracefully, I must tell you at the beginning of life; for no man can grow old gracefully unless he begins early.

  Lyman Abbott

  Men, Age, Grows

  Lyman Abbott (1900). “Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott”

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• Most fatal diseases had their own specific odor, but ... none was as specific as old age.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Age, Odor, Disease

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• Much violence against women originates in emotional territory that they already command. By midlife and early old age, as the hormones of both genders change, women are in total, despotic control of their marriages.

  Camille Paglia

  Emotional, Age, Midlife

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.46, Vintage

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• Suicide is what everyone young thinks they'll do before they get old. But they hardly ever get round to it. They just don't want to commit themselves in that way. When you're young and you look ahead, time ends in mist at twenty-five. 'Old won't happen to me', you say. But old does. Oh, old does. Old always gets you in the end.

  Martin Amis

  Suicide, Thinking, Age

  Martin Amis (1981). “Other people: a mystery story”, Jonathan Cape

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• Nothing embitters my old age [like] the circulation of absurd stories that I retire as civilization advances, that I shun the white men and seek the Indians, and that now even when old, I seek to retire beyond the second Alleganies.

  Daniel Boone

  Men, White Man, Civilization

  "The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer". Book by John Mack Faragher, p. 302, 1993.

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