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.
We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.
Age too shines out: and, garrulous, recounts the feats of youth.
Now I was stuck and could feel the tide of years suddenly beginning to rise around me.
All my life I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.
Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.
There is an old poor man
Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger.
Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.