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Age Quotes

Age is another Shakespeare topic, followed by Byron, Longfellow, Seneca and La Rochefoucauld. The best-sourced lines range from sour to funny. Disraeli, in Vivian Grey (1826), hopes the heritage of old age is not despair. Emerson, in Society and Solitude (1870), says we do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count. George Carlin, in It’s Bad for Ya (2008), points out that one great thing about getting old is that you can get out of social obligations just by saying you’re tired.

Three entries are flagged: a passage on the feeling of no longer being a boy, credited to Anatole France, and one on providing for old age so that it may meditate, credited to Pearl S. Buck, are marked misattributed, and Dryden’s lines on old age creeping on with silent pace are disputed.

Random quote on Age

Most quoted on age:

I will never give in to old age until I become old. And I am not old yet!

Tina Turner I, Tina (1986)

Adulthood is not just gauged by years survived. An adult is able to act independently, to resist manipulation, to make his own decisions. And to take the consequences.

Esther Friesner Demon Blues (1989)

You know you’re getting old when everything aggravates you.

Glen Cook The White Rose (1985)

I said, “I am a soldier, grown old and tired and confused. I have been fighting since before you were born. And I have yet to see anything gained.”

Glen Cook The White Rose (1985)

Old age is all about killing time.

Rudy Rucker Mad Professor (2007)

I see you laugh, and rightly so. What is this silly old fool rambling on about? Good for you. Never respect years, only deeds.

Tanith Lee Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

If one over the age of seven takes a prepubescent wife of less than seven and transfers her to his house, such a contract gives rise to the impediment of public propriety.

Gratian

People don't like reality, they don't like common sense, until age forces it on them.

Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear (1943)

"Old age is a peace of the deep forest."

Juraj Jurjević Zimzelene starine (1983)

Here by the baring bough
Raking up leaves,
Often I ponder how
Springtime deceives,—
I, an old woman now,
Raking up leaves.

Thomas Hardy Time's Laughingstocks (1909)

Light heart, light foot, light food, and slumber light,
These lights shall light us to old Age's gate,
While monarchs, whom rebellious dreams affright,
Heavy with fear, death's fearful summons wait.

Edward Hovell-Thurlow, 2nd Baron Thurlow Select Poems (1821)

"You must be very old, Sir Giles,"
I said; he said: "Yea, very old:"
Whereat the mournfullest of smiles
Creased his dry skin with many a fold.

William Morris The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems (1858)

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment

Franklin D. Roosevelt State of the Union Address — Second Bill of Rights (1944)

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

Herman Melville Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)

Old age is the repose of life,—the rest that precedes the rest that remains.

Robert Collyer

Old age doth all things teach, and lapse of time.

Sophocles

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

Samuel Johnson Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

"Old age can be very frightening, Commander. A lawyer whose mind is apt to go blank isn't just inefficient, he's dangerous."

P. D. James A Certain Justice (1997)

What a glorious thing to man is slavery, when want, misfortune, old age, debility and sickness overtake him.

George Fitzhugh Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854)

Old age isn't for sissies, and neither is this film.

Roger Ebert

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