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.
No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year.
Old age is not so fiery as youth, but when once provoked cannot be appeased.
Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Give me a staff of honor for mine age,
But not a sceptre to control the world.
I recently turned 60. Practically a third of my life is over.
Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true;
We're only genuine children still in Age's season.
We dread old age, which we are not sure of being able to attain.
What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys but that our hopes cease.
Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo,
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe!
When he's forsaken,
Wither'd and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?