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.
Age imprints more wrinkles on the mind than it does on the face.
A green old age, unconscious of decays,
That proves the hero born in better days.
Thus pleasures fade away;
Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay,
And leave us dark, forlorn, and gray.
At your age,
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment.
You are old;
As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.
The first symptom is that hair grows on your ears. It's very disconcerting.
Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read!