The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed of them.
Quotations about:
getting old
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Cadfael buckled his saddlebags before him, and mounted a little stiffly, but with plain pleasure. Considerately, Hugh refrained from offering help. Sixty-five is an age deserving of respect and reverence from the young, but those who have reached it do not always like to be reminded.
Ellis Peters (1913-1995) English writer, translator [pseud. of Edith Mary Pargeter, who also wrote under the names John Redfern, Jolyon Carr, Peter Benedict]
Brother Cadfael’s Penance, ch. 2 (1994)
(Source)
You are young, and then you are middle-aged, but it is hard to tell the moment of passage from one state to the next. Then you are old, but you hardly know when it happened.
Doris Lessing (1919-2013) British author, biographer, playwright [b. Doris May Tayler]
The Summer Before the Dark (1973)
(Source)
He had never before been quite so acutely aware of the particular quality and function of November, its ripeness and its hushed sadness. The year proceeds not in a straight line through the seasons, but in a circle that brings the world and man back to the dimness and mystery in which both began, and out of which a new seed-time and a new generation are about to begin. Old men, thought Cadfael, believe in that new beginning, but experience only the ending. It may be that God is reminding me that I am approaching my November. Well, why regret it? November has beauty, has seen the harvest into the barns, even laid by next year’s seed. No need to fret about not being allowed to stay and sow it, someone else will do that. So go contentedly into the earth with the moist, gentle, skeletal leaves, worn to cobweb fragility, like the skins of very old men, that bruise and stain at the mere brushing of the breeze, and flower into brown blotches as the leaves into rotting gold. The colours of late autumn are the colours of the sunset: the farewell of the year and the farewell of the day. And of the life of man? Well, if it ends in a flourish of gold, that is no bad ending.
Ellis Peters (1913-1995) English writer, translator [pseud. of Edith Mary Pargeter, who also wrote under the names John Redfern, Jolyon Carr, Peter Benedict]
Brother Cadfael’s Penance, ch. 1 (1994)
(Source)
PETER: Because I heard father and mother talking of what I was to be when I became a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun; so I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long time among the fairies.
J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish novelist and dramatist [James Matthew Barrie]
Peter Pan, Act 1 (1904, pub. 1928)
(Source)
In Barrie's 1911 novelization, Peter and Wendy, ch. 3 "Come Away, Come Away!" this is rendered:“It was because I heard father and mother,” he explained in a low voice, “talking about what I was to be when I became a man.” He was extraordinarily agitated now. “I don’t want ever to be a man,” he said with passion. “I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies.”
Years steal
Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb;
And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3, st. 8 (1816)
(Source)
A wise woman is never passé. She crosses the bridge spanning youth and age with firm step and smiling lips.
Minna Antrim (1861-1950) American epigrammatist, writer
Naked Truth and Veiled Allusions (1902)
(Source)
The fust intimashun i had that i waz gitting old waz, i found myself telling to mi friends the same storys over again.
[The first intimation I had that I was getting old was, I found myself telling to my friends the same stories over again.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 155 “Affurisms: Ink Lings” (1874)
(Source)
I’m growing fonder of my staff;
I’m growing dimmer in the eyes;
I’m growing fainter in my laugh;
I’m growing deeper in my sighs;
I’m growing careless of my dress;
I’m growing frugal of my gold;
I’m growing wise; I’m growing, — yes, —
I’m growing old!
Sum folks, az they gro older, gro wizer; but most folks simply gro stubbornner.
[Some folks, as they grow older, grow wiser; but most folks simply grow more stubborn.]Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 148 “Affurisms: Ink Brats” (1874)
(Source)
My days of love are over; me no more
The charms of maid, wife, and still less of widow,
Can make the fool of which they made before, —
In short, I must not lead the life I did do;
The credulous hope of mutual minds is o’er,
The copious use of claret is forbid too,
So for a good old-gentlemanly vice,
I think I must take up with avarice.
What a wretched lot of old shriveled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind, — the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship, and now it is in a slight degree my experience.
George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Letter to Sara Hennell (1852-05-27)
(Source)
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
(Source)
You know growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.
PROFESSOR: What message do people generally send back when you first call on them?
OLD AGE: Not at home. Then I leave a card and go. Next year I call; get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or six, — sometimes ten years or more. At last, if they don’t let me in, I break in through the front door or the windows.
Inside every older person there’s a younger person wondering what happened.
Ashleigh Brilliant (b. 1933) Anglo-American epigramist, aphorist, cartoonist
Pot-Shots, #1390
I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing old age that it is a time of discovery. If they say, “Of what?” I can only answer, “We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it wouldn’t be discovery.”
Florida Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) American-British playwright, author, psychologist
(Attributed)
She shrugged. “I don’t mind getting old.”
“I didn’t mind getting old when I was young, either,” I said. “It’s the being old now that’s getting to me.”
John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
Old Man’s War (2005)
Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
LADY BRACKNELL: Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was many years ago now.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3 (1895)
(Source)
Our hair
Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.
SUSAN: Sally, does it ever occur to you that age brings wisdom and greater confidence?
SALLY: Susan, age brings you more to shave.
Steven Moffat (b. 1961) Scottish television writer, producer
Coupling, 01×01 “Flushed” (2000-05-12)
(Source)
Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech (1952-10-08), “The Area of Freedom,” University of Wisconsin, Madison
(Source)
I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old-age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, essayist, wit
Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith, by His Daughter, Lady Holland, Vol. 1, ch. 11 (1855)
(Source)
Books, you know, Charles, are like lobster shells. We surround ourselves with ’em, and then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidences of our earlier stages of development.
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) English author, translator
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, ch. 18 “Picture-cards” [Peter] (1928)
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