Quotes about age
Growing older, gaining sense and losing hair. Quotes about age and experience, wry and wise in roughly equal measure.
The library has 528 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about age
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Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained treasure in their youth, perish like old herons in a lake without fish.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 155 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Years following years steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.
Alexander Pope Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Epistle ii, Book ii. Line 72 -
A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh grows, but his knowledge does not grow.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 152 · translated by F. Max Müller -
But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave.
William Wordsworth To a Young Lady. Dear Child of Nature -
Time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand; And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer.
William Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3 -
His silver hairs Will purchase us a good opinion, And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds; It shall be said—his judgment ruled our hands.
William Shakespeare Julius Caesar, Act ii. Sc. 1 -
An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye: Give him a little earth for charity!
William Shakespeare Henry VIII, Act iv. Sc. 2 -
For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time Steals ere we can effect them.
William Shakespeare All’s Well That Ends Well, Act v. Sc. 3 -
What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life’s page, And be alone on earth as I am now.
Lord Byron Childe Harold, Canto II -
This is the place. Stand still, my steed,—Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Gleam of Sunshine -
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, Alike fantastic if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Part ii. Line 133 -
Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; Old age is slow in both.
Joseph Addison Canto, Act ii -
From reveries so airy, from the toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.
William Cowper The Task, Book iii. The Garden. Line 188 -
Error is quite right as long as we are young, but we must not carry it on with us into our old age. Whims and eccentricities that grow stale are all useless, rank nonsense.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 72 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
It’s the old, old story. Love—well, not at first sight—but love at the end of the season, which is so much more satisfactory.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
In archery it is not going through the leather which is the principal thing; because people’s strength is not equal. This was the old way.
Confucius Analects, III.16 · translated by James Legge -
When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 113 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
A man is not an elder because his head is grey; his age may be ripe, but he is called `Old-in-vain.’
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 260 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained treasure in their youth, lie, like broken bows, sighing after the past.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 156 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Laws are all made by old people and by men. Youths and women want the exceptions, old people the rules.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 321 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.
Abraham Lincoln October 20 -
Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
One should never make one’s début with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one’s old age.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
I shall never be old enough to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to talk about.
Abraham Lincoln December 12 -
For thirty years I have been a temperance man, and I am too old to change.
Abraham Lincoln November 17 -
Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 584 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
Aristotle -
No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are past.
Lord Byron -
When things have become strong, they then become old, which may be said to be contrary to the Tao. Whatever is contrary to the Tao soon ends.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 55.4 · translated by James Legge -
When things have attained their strong maturity they become old. This may be said to be not in accordance with the Tao: and what is not in accordance with it soon comes to an end.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 30.4 · translated by James Legge -
The discoveries of men from age to age turn out the same. The kindness and the malice of the world in general are the same. Plerumque gratae principibus vices.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 354 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
To be of noble birth is a great advantage. In eighteen years it places a man within the select circle, known and respected, as another would have merited in fifty years. It is a gain of thirty years without trouble.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 322 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
John Dryden Imitation of Horace, Book iii. Ode 29, Line 71 -
There should be a neighbouring state within sight, and the voices of the fowls and dogs should be heard all the way from it to us, but I would make the people to old age, even to death, not have any intercourse with it.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 80.5 · translated by James Legge -
What do you then promise me, in addition to certain troubles, but ten years of self-love (for ten years is the chance), to try hard to please without success?
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 238 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
As I approve of a youth, that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man, that has something of the youth.
Cicero -
A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.
Francis Bacon Essays -
Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
Was it not in the order of destiny that these persons too should first become old women and old men and then die? What then would those do after these were dead?
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VIII.37 · translated by George Long -
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
George Chapman All Fools, Act v. Sc. 1 -
Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the herd.
Henry David Thoreau Walden -
If we were as intent upon our business as the old fellows at Rome are upon what interests them, we too might perhaps accomplish something.
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. XXIV · translated by Hastings Crossley -
Grudge it not to an old man, to behold a sight he has never yet beheld.
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. LXXVIII · translated by Hastings Crossley -
Trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable.
Thomas Carlyle Sartor Resartus -
Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices. Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present?
Michel de Montaigne -
Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon.
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto ii. Stanza 88 -
Study the past if you would divine the future.
Confucius -
I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.
George Eliot -
He who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him.
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iii. Stanza 5 -
The blemishes of the mind, like those of the face, increase by age.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 112 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CLXXXI -
The old protectionist theory is the doctrine of trades unions as applied by the squires, and the modern trades unionism is the doctrine of the squires applied by the artisans.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. LXXXII -
The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life -
The most dangerous folly of old persons who have been loveable is to forget that they are no longer so.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 408 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
In the old age of love as in life we still survive for the evils, though no longer for the pleasures.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 430 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Reckoned by centuries, the remoteness of the quaternary, or pleistocene, age from our own is immense, and it is difficult to form an adequate notion of its duration.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CLXXXV -
The vivacity which increases in old age is not far removed from folly.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 416 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell