Old Age Quotes

“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard there's nothing you can do.”
― Golda Meir, As good as Golda;: The warmth and wisdom of Israel's Prime Minister

“...one of the roles of man is to shut his eyes and keep them shut to see if he can continue into the night of his old age the dream curtailed in the night of his youth.”
― Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro

“Parker, I'm old," She said matter-of-factly. "I get away with these things." She continued to wave and smile wildly. "People treat me like an idiot so I'm allowed to act like one from time to time. It's one of the perks.”
― Abby Slovin, Letters In Cardboard Boxes

“[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.”
― Donald Hall

“There was already something dead about him. He didn’t rear back in his knees any longer. He squatted over his ankles when he walked. That stillness at the back of his neck. His prosperous-looking belly…sagged like a load suspended from his loins.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“I wrapped my hands around the familiar cup and tried to draw strength from it. It was from Thea's old Moss Rose set, remnant of careful scrimping and saving in her first year of marriage. Yet the mellow old cup now brought me no comfort, only a feeling of helplessness, of time slipping away. Sunday-best dishes gone to everyday and now to mismatched pieces. Like Thea and me”
― Lorena McCourtney, Invisible

“Una vida larga es como una enorme caverna: en ella todo hace eco.”
― Gabriel Payares

“Los viejos tienen la muerte, y los jóvenes el amor, y la muerte viene una sola vez y el amor muchas.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“In later life most good things happen very slowly; only bad things tend to happen fast.”
― Mark Edmundson

“I was quite a looker in my time," she said. Was she reading his mind, or only being smart, to know she must be hideous?

"Oh, had they invented time as long ago as that?”
― Gregory Maguire, A Lion Among Men

“Mature'? Good grief! I'm not a cheese. Or a herbaceous border.”
― Clare Pooley, How to Age Disgracefully

“What if experience is disappointment, and a human’s old age has no sense, and all what we acquire in our lifetime is a habit for disappointment?”
― Lara Biuts, The Sunless Parlour

“Burdensome beauty - for your sole sake
Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
So great her portion in that peace you make
By merely walking in a room.

(Broken Dreams”
― W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Listen, darling, being old is risky. The rest of it is just a matter of tactics.”
― Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Plus

“In any case, all the memories of those years full of life will soon fade; disease doesn't spare your memories; they will die the very instant she does.”
― Astrid H. Roemer, Gebroken wit

“Being old does not necessarily mean being wise or mature. All it means is that you have more growth rings under your belt.”
― Boris Zubry

“The Eviction by Stewart Stafford

The mind's paper vessel crumples
Sodden with learning and memory
Ne'er to sail waves of reminiscence
A living statue, hewn by sculptor Time.

The physician nor the shaman console
Self-pitying sobs in the moaning wind
Brought down by jackals in the dunes
The skull's tenant but a daily squatter

Nostalgic waves batter alien shores
Déjà vu of the blood and the collegial
A stranger's reflection in misting eyes
A sandcastle sacked to the four winds

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved”
― Stewart Stafford

“And then you're old and come to realize
Words are not half as eloquent as sighs.

[from 'Shutting Up Shop']”
― Joseph Hansen

“Old customs are not meant to make us old.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“Lao Yang had hem verteld dat zestig, net als zestien, de mooiste tijd van je leven vormde, een leeftijd waarop de lasten van de veertiger en vijftiger zijn afgeworpen, maar de neergang en de ziekten van de zeventiger en tachtiger nog niet zijn gekomen. Een leeftijd om van het leven te genieten. '

Fragment uit
Het donkere woud
Cixin Liu”
― Cixin Liu

“She smiles to herself. I can imagine her memories of the novel, or, more likely, of who she was and how she felt when reading it. She blushes.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Do you remember after the last war—when we were hunting down Mr. Brown? Do you remember what fun it was? How excited we were?”

Tommy agreed, his face lighting up.

“Rather!”

“Tommy—why isn’t it the same now?”

He considered the question, his quiet ugly face grave. Then he said:

“I suppose it’s really—a question of age.”

Tuppence said sharply:

“You don’t think—we’re too old?”
― Agatha Christie, N or M?

“From his perspective, Daddy Henry was a nice enough collection of wrinkles.”
― Jason Mott, Hell of a Book

“Don Fabrizio grew calm again; his nephew was looking at him with the affectionate irony which youth accords to age.”
― Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard

“Mature? Good grief! I'm not a cheese. Or a herbaceous border.”
― Clare Pooley, How to Age Disgracefully

“Before you know it, you will be 30, you will be 40, and you will have fucking nothing.”
― Sam Hyde

“I lay there turning over the pages of my life, thinking of what I had done and left undone, and of the dreams from which I had awakened. How far off seem the bright visions of early boyhood, and how poor and bare the reality looks. I thought of all my expectations, and the small results of my labors; of my wife, who certainly cannot be called either good-natured or good-looking, of my sons who hardly seem to belong to me, with whom I have nothing in common:—of the faithlessness and folly of those around us, of our poor France torn by civil wars and religious persecutions; of my works of art scattered, life itself a handful of ashes, soon to be blown away by the breath of the Destroyer.—I put my face close up against the oak tree, and lay there weeping quietly all among the big roots which cradled me like a father’s arms; and I felt that he listened.”
― Romain Rolland, Colas Breugnon

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what they say. I hum my songs and march ahead.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“Her brother was dying. She wasn't curious any longer: much that she now knew caused her pain, and she strove, chiefly, to numb that pain when she could.”
― Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

“La hermosa juventud dicen que es efímera, pero la fea vejez no digamos: además de incómoda y humillante, fugaz. Nadie puede quedarse en ella, se va más deprisa que la infancia. La verdad es que los muchos años convierten la vida en un deporte de riesgo. Hoy yo, a mi jurásica edad, corro más peligro de muerte bajando cautelosamente a comprar el periódico en el quiosco frente a mi casa (sí, aún venden periódicos, entre muñequitos, billetes de lotería, cargadores de móvil y otros mil cachivaches) que un joven de veinte años haciendo parapente. Es indecente y de nada sirve encogerse de hombros de forma hipócrita como si no tuviese importancia.”
― Fernando Savater, Carne Gobernada: De política, amor y deseo