Youth is a blunder, manhood is a struggle and old age a regret.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
When you retire you go from Who’s Who to Who’s That?
—Walter Wriston (1919–2005) American Banker
More women grow old nowadays through the faithfulness of their admirers than through anything else.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
When you’re 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
—Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright, Poet, Literary Critic
It can be set down as a broad, general principle that we cannot indulge in idleness and abundance during both the first and second half of our life. Study, application, industry, enthusiasm while we are young usually enable us to enjoy life when we grow older. But unless we toil and strive and earn all we can in the first half, the second half of our life is liable to bring disappointment, discomfort, distress. The time to put forth effort is when we are most able to do it, namely, in the years of our greatest strength. The law of compensation hasn’t ceased to function.
—B. C. Forbes (1880–1954) Scottish-born American Journalist, Publisher
An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
When I grow up, I want to be a little boy.
—Joseph Heller (1923–99) American Novelist
There’s no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American Teacher, Writer, Philosopher
Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.
—Jean Antoine Petit-Senn (1792–1870) Swiss Poet
They are all gone into the world of light, and I alone sit lingering here.
—Henry Vaughan (1621–95) Anglo-Welsh Metaphysical Poet
As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
Few people know how to be old.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
Age is opportunity no less,
than youth itself, though in another dress.
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled by the stars invisible by the day.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
With maturity comes the wish to economize—to be more simple. Maturity is the period when one finds the just measure.
—Bela Bartok (1881–1945) Hungarian Composer, Ethnomusicologist
O Time and change!—with hair as gray as was my sire’s that winter day, how strange it seems, with so much gone of life and love, to still live on!
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) American Quaker Poet, Abolitionist
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.
—Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.
—Louis Kronenberger (1904–80) American Drama, Literary Critic
What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
So then the year is repeating its old story again. We are come once more, thank God! to its most charming chapter. The violets and the May flowers are as its inscriptions or vignettes. It always makes a pleasant impression on us, when we open again at these pages of the book of life.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Grow old with me the best is yet to come.
—Robert Browning (1812–89) English Poet
I’m like old wine. They don’t bring me out very often, but I’m well preserved.
—Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890–1995) American Philanthropist, Socialite
Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.
—Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) American Sportsperson
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God, the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish Poet, Dramatist
How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
You know you’re getting old when all the names in your black book have M. D. after them.
—Arnold Palmer (b.1929) American Sportsperson
That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.
—Richard Steele (1672–1729) Irish Writer, Politician
A man is as old as he feels and a woman as old as she looks.
—Common Proverb
Age is a matter of feeling, not of years.
—George William Curtis (1824–92) American Essayist, Public Speaker, Editor, Author