About Aging

Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
Abigail Van Buren (1918 - ), 1978
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.
Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976)
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.
Anouk Aimee, O Magazine, October 2003
Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), 'Nicomachean Ethics'
Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
Bernard M. Baruch (1870 - 1965), 1940
Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
Betty Friedan (1921 - 2006)
There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you.
Carol Matthau, O Magazine, October 2003
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all.
Doris Lessing, O Magazine, October 2003
The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.
Doug Larson
I'm very pleased with each advancing year. It stems back to when I was forty. I was a bit upset about reaching that milestone, but an older friend consoled me. 'Don't complain about growing old - many, many people do not have that privilege.'
Earl Warren (1891 - 1974), Chief Justice
In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 - 1902), O Magazine, October 2003
Though it sounds absurd, it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I felt at twenty.
Ellen Glasgow (1873 - 1945), The Woman Within, 1954
I grow more intense as I age.
Florida Scott-Maxwell, O Magazine, October 2003
The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869 - 1959)
Age to me means nothing. I can't get old; I'm working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you're working, you stay young. When I'm in front of an audience, all that love and vitality sweeps over me and I forget my age.
George Burns (1896 - 1996)
I was always taught to respect my elders and I've now reached the age when I don't have anybody to respect.
George Burns (1896 - 1996)
It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.
George Sand (1804 - 1876)
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
George Santayana (1863 - 1952)
About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.
Gloria Pitzer, in Reader's Digest, 1979
Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
A young man is embarrassed to question an older one.
Homer (800 BC - 700 BC), The Odyssey
Young men's minds are always changeable, but when an old man is concerned in a matter, he looks both before and after.
Homer (800 BC - 700 BC), The Iliad
To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love.
Karl von Bonstetten
Sure i'm for helping the elderly. I'm going to be old myself some day.
Lillian Carter, in her 80s