Longevity is having a chronic disease and taking care of it.
Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
I'm very pleased with each advancing year. It stems back to when I was forty. I was a bit upset about reaching that milestone, but an older friend consoled me. 'Don't complain about growing old - many people don't have that privilege.'
When I was very young, I was disgracefully intolerant but when I passed the thirty mark I prided myself on having learned the beautiful lesson that all things were good, and equally good. That, however, was really laziness. Now, thank goodness, I've sorted out what matters and what doesn't. And I'm beginning to be intolerant again.
It is the fear of being as dependent as a young child, while not being loved as a child is loved, but merely being kept alive against one's will.
Happy the man who gains sagacity in youth, but thrice happy he who retains the fervour of youth in age.
Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live only about a hundred years.
How beautifully the leaves grow old. How full of light and colour are their last days.
In the last few years everything I'd done up to sixty or so has seemed very childish.
What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.
The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions.
To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
When you reach your sixties, you have to decide whether you're going to be a sot or an ascetic. In other words if you want to go on working after you're sixty, some degree of asceticism is inevitable.
Yes, I'm 68, but when I was a boy I was too poor to smoke, so knock off ten years. That makes me 58. And since I never developed the drinking habit, you can knock off ten more years. So I'm 48 - in the prime of my life. Retire? Retire to what?
Life has got to be lived - that's all there is to it. At seventy, I would say the advantage is that you take life more calmly. You know that 'this, too, shall pass!'
Senescence begins And middle age ends, The day your descendants Outnumber your friends.
On the day of his death, in his eightieth year, Elliot, 'the Apostle of the Indians,' was found teaching an Indian child at his bedside. 'Why not to rest from your labours now?' asked a friend. 'Because,' replied the venerable man, 'I have prayed God to render me useful in my sphere, and he has heard my prayers; for now that I can no longer preach, he leaves me strength enough to teach this poor child the alphabet.'
As the world is wearie of me so am I of it.
Middle age is when you have a choice of two temptations and choose the one that will get you home earlier.
