When you reach forty you can’t do anything every day.
Henry "Hank" Aaron
When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past...
And when you are seventy, nearly all of you.
Jean Anouilh
I refuse to admit I'm more than fifty-two, even if that does make my sons illegitimate.
Lady Nancy Astor
The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.
Lucille Ball
If I were younger, I'd know more.
James Barrie
A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams.
John Barrymore, "Good Night, Sweet Prince" 1943
To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
Bernard M. Baruch
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be.
The last of life, for which the first was made.
Robert Browning "'Rabbi Ben Ezra"
Years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb,
And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
George Gordon, Lord Byron "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.
Coco Chanel
I prefer old age to the alternative.
Maurice Chevalier
One keeps on forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
Colette
Old age is no place for sissies.
Bette Davis
As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
T. S. Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If youth but knew; if age but could.
Henri Estienne
At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty the wit; at forty the judgment.
Benjamin Franklin
Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.
Bob Hope
After a man passes sixty, his mischief is mainly in his head.
Edgar Watson Howe
I have everything I had twenty years ago, only it’s all a little bit lower.
Gypsy Rose Lee
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Morituri Salutamus" 1875
After thirty, a body has a mind of its own.
Bette Midler
At age fifty, every man has the face he deserves.
George Orwell
Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
Satchel Paige
How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?
Satchel Paige
Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It’s more often a succession of jerks.
Jean Rhys
Old Age: First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.
Leo Rosenberg
Some reckon their age by years,
Some measure their life by art;
But some tell their days by the flow of their tears
And their lives by the moans of their hearts.
Abram Joseph Ryan
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
George Bernard Shaw "Maxims for Revolutionists"
When men reach their sixties and retire they go to pieces. Women just go right on cooking.
Gail Sheehy
Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the old man."
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the old man.
Shel Silverstein
Youth is the time for adventures of the body, but age for the triumphs of the mind.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.
Leon Trotsky
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting out ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Samuel Ullman
Be wise with speed;
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
Edward Young
Like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.
Edward Young "Night Thoughts"
We have a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over thirty.
Jack Weinberg
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
James M. Barrie
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
John Ciardi
To stay young requires the unceasing ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
Robert A. Heinlein
How to stay young: hang around with older people.
Bob Hope
When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose is a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey, for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog its day.
Charles Kingsley "Water Babies"
The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
We must not build the future for our youth. We must build our youth for the future.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken man are apt to think themselves sober enough.
