Old Quotes

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
― Robert Heinlein

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
― H.L. Mencken

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old”
― Peter Drucker

“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

“Aemon’s blind white eyes came open. “Egg?” he said, as the rain streamed down his cheeks. “Egg, I dreamed that I was old.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Don't you know that love isn't just going to bed? Love isn't an act, it's a whole life. It's staying with her now because she needs you; it's knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures -- when all that's on the shelf and done with. Love -- why, I'll tell you what love is: it's you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over.”
― Brian Moore

“My God,' he gasped, 'you're fun to kiss.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

“Youthfulness is about how you live not when you were born.”
― Karl Lagerfeld

“Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.

Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

“We are so old, we have become young again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“It is a splendid thing to think that the woman you really love will never grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through the mask of years, if you really love her, you will always see the face you loved and won. And a woman who really loves a man does not see that he grows old; he is not decrepit to her; he does not tremble; he is not old; she always sees the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in that way; I like to think that love is eternal. And to love in that way and then go down the hill of life together, and as you go down, hear, perhaps, the laughter of grandchildren, while the birds of joy and love sing once more in the leafless branches of the tree of age.”
― Robert Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

“You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.”
― Michael Pritchard

“A Second Childhood.”

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber’s dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And I find that I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky;
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I:
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton

“I smile to myself knowing that they may be dead.”
― Emilie Autumn

“A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.”
― Jane Yolen, Girl in a Cage

“You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream.”
― CS Lewis

“I don't see why there should be a point where everyone decides you're too old. I'm not too old, and until I decide I'm too old I'll never be too fucking old.”
― Lemmy Kilmister

“The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air.

It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.

Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the winter day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night.

The bell can only be seen at the turning of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again.

When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart.

It is your immortal inspiration.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“I read the title from the cover. ' 'The joy of... crap.' ' I read the rest of the full title of the thick, nondescript volume to myself and felt myself redden.
Noah turned over on to his side and said with mock seriousness, 'I have never read 'The Joy Of Crap'. Sounds disgusting.' I blushed deeper. 'I have, however, read 'The Joy Of Sex.' ' He continued, a smile transforming his face. 'Not in a while, but I think it's one of those classics you can come back to again... and again.”
― Michelle Hodkin, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

“Remember the days when you let your child have some chocolate if he finished his cereal? Now, chocolate is one of the cereals.”
― Robert Orben

“Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.
Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps.
We have time to grow old.
The air is full of our cries.
But habit is a great deadener.
At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing.
Let him sleep on.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“The very old and the very young have something in common that makes it right that they should be left alone together. Dawn and sunset see stars shining in a blue sky; but morning and midday and afternoon do not, poor things.”
― Elizabeth Goudge

“How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant

“Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“JANUARY,
The first month of the year,
A perfect time to start all over again,
Changing energies and deserting old moods,
New beginnings, new attitudes”
― Charmaine J Forde

“O: Hey youngman, you should respect me!
Y: Hey oldman, you should understand me!”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“For a moment it seemed as if he was going to lose his temper too. His strange, pale eyes all but glared at Sophie. But he controlled himself and said, "Now trot along indoors, you overactive old thing, and find something else to play with before I get angry. I hate getting angry.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle