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Age quotes

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“Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!” William Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 2” - 1600

“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?” Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea” - 1952

“But old fools is the biggest fools there is.” Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” - 1876

“He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“A man that is young in years, may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.” Francis Bacon, “The Essays of Francis Bacon” - 1597

“Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses.” Francis Bacon, “The Essays of Francis Bacon” - 1597

“Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” - 1858

“Chastisement for errors past Wisdom brings to age at last.” Sophocles, “Antigone” - c. 441 BC

“Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.” Samuel Johnson, “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” - 1759

“Or what is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?” Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling” - 1843

“Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.” Andy Warhol, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” - 1975

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” Mark Twain, “Following the Equator” - 1897

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.” Oscar Wilde, “A Woman of No Importance” - 1893

“everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.” Margaret Atwood, “Cat's Eye” - 1988

“People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Flappers and Philosophers” - 1920

“It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older” Michel de Montaigne, “The Essays of Michel de Montaigne” - 1580

“So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic, because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.” John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent” - 1961

“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.” William Shakespeare, “King Lear” - 1623

“A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.” William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing” - 1600

“How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!” William Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 2” - 1600

“Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age?” William Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 2” - 1600

“Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.” William Shakespeare, “Henry VIII” - 1623

“The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.” Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” - 1851

“There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“There was great difference in persons; and discretion did not always accompany years, nor was youth always without it.” Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” - 1791

“I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth...” Plato, “The Republic”

“Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter” - 1850

“A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” - 1858

“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” - 1858

“I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love. But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man.” Anatole France, “The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard” - 1881

“Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything had which nature makes inevitable.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, “On Old Age” - 44 BC

“Again, just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem as...” Marcus Tullius Cicero, “On Old Age” - 44 BC

“When I was growing up they used to say, "Robin, drugs can kill you." And now that I'm 58, my doctor's going, "Robin, you need drugs to live."” Robin Williams, “Weapons of Self Destruction” - 2009

“However, procreation is nature’s principal occupation, and every man, whether he be young or old, when meeting every woman measures the potentiality of sex between them.” Charlie Chaplin, “My Autobiography” - 1964

“The first years of man must make provision for the last. He that never thinks, never can be wise.” Samuel Johnson, “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia” - 1759

“The years 19 and 20 are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.” Haruki Murakami, “Norwegian Wood” - 1987

“His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.” Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!” - 1989

“True, it has conquered many diseases, broken the genetic code, and even placed human beings on the moon, and yet when a man of eighty is left in a room with two eighteen-year-old cocktail waitresses nothing happens.” Woody Allen, “Side Effects” - 1980

“You hate to tell new stuff to somebody around a hundred years old. They don't like to hear it.” J. D. Salinger, “The Catcher in the Rye” - 1951

“There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection.” Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein” - 1818

“no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating...” Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest” - 1895

“Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.” Jane Austen, “Persuasion” - 1816

“I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.” Haruki Murakami, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” - 1997

“The idea of a teenage Dumbledore was simply odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Hermione or a friendly Blast-Ended Skrewt.” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” - 2007

“By the time you read this, you’ll be older than you remember.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Diary” - 2003

“You know I'm old in some ways—in other—well, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness—and I dread responsibility.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “This Side of Paradise” - 1920

“We all have souls of different ages” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Beautiful and Damned” - 1922

Related topics

youth wisdom women men mind love passion responsibility burden violence death life trust discretion truth hiding foolishness God speech contempt

Related authors

William Shakespeare (6)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (3)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (3)
Oscar Wilde (2)
Mark Twain (2)
Francis Bacon (2)
Marcus Tullius Cicero (2)
Samuel Johnson (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
John Steinbeck (2)
Jane Austen (1)
Ernest Hemingway (1)
James Joyce (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
Charlotte Brontë (1)
George Orwell (1)
Herman Melville (1)
Bram Stoker (1)
Benjamin Franklin (1)

Related sources

Henry IV, Part 2 (3)
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (3)
The Essays of Francis Bacon (2)
On Old Age (2)
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (2)
Much Ado About Nothing (1)
King Lear (1)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1)
This Side of Paradise (1)
The Beautiful and Damned (1)
Henry VIII (1)
The Old Man and the Sea (1)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1)
A Game of Thrones (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
1984 (1)
Moby-Dick (1)
Dracula (1)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1)
The Republic (1)