Martin, Judith -- Essay (1996-03/04), Modern Maturity magazine

Dave — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 15:27:52 +0000

People will say, “Seventy isn’t old, it’s middle-aged,” and I think, middle of what — 140?

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Essay (1996-03/04), Modern Maturity magazine

Spark, Muriel -- Memento Mori, ch. 4 [Miss Jean Taylor] (1959)

Dave — Fri, 02 May 2025 22:39:45 +0000

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) Scottish writer, poet, essayist
Memento Mori, ch. 4 [Miss Jean Taylor] (1959)
(Source)

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. -- Reply to an invitation from Maud Howe to Julia Ward Howe’s birthday (1889-05-27)

Dave — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 12:17:20 +0000

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar
Reply to an invitation from Maud Howe to Julia Ward Howe’s birthday (1889-05-27)

This is the long form version of the quotation, today usually rendered, "It is better to be seventy years young than forty years old."

Other variants:

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful than to be forty years old.
To feel seventy years young is far more cheerful than to feel forty years old.
It is possible to be seventy years young, instead of forty years old.

The first references to this quotation are within the first few months of the event, which argues for its authenticity, including The Unitarian Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 7 (1889-07) and even newspaper blurbs, e.g., 1889-05-30. This last has a more expanded quotation:

As for your mothers's age, I am bound to believe her own story, but I can only say that to be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

In a 1910 obituary article for Howe, the story and the full quote are again given.

Howe and Holmes (who was eighty when he gave this) were good friends, and Howe and her daughter Laura frequently visited the elder poet. In Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, ch. 23 (1915), a biography of Howe by Laura and another daughter, Maud, it expands the anecdote:

The seventieth birthday was a great festival. Maud, inviting Oliver Wendell Holmes to the party, had written, "Mamma will be seventy years young on the 27th, Come and play with her!"
The Doctor in his reply said, "It is better to be seventy years young than forty years old!"

Note that uses the short form, and give at least partial credit to the phrase to Maud.

References to the quotation, or even just to "seventy years young" (crediting it to Holmes) are common in the 1890s (e.g., 1890, 1892, 1894, 1899) and into the new millennium . Emily Bishop titled her 1907 self-help book, The Road to "Seventy Years Young"; or The Unhabitual Way after this phrase (which she used as the epigraph on the title page; ironically, she died in 1916 at age 58). Its appearance (in short form) in Howe's 1915 biography, and (in long form) in the 1919 Bartlett's were at its peak popularity.

WIST Quotations

Martin, Judith -- Essay (1996-03/04), Modern Maturity magazine

Spark, Muriel -- Memento Mori, ch. 4 [Miss Jean Taylor] (1959)

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. -- Reply to an invitation from Maud Howe to Julia Ward Howe’s birthday (1889-05-27)