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When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see. (Chinua Achebe)

I expect to retire to a fine-grained heaven where the temperatures are always consistent, where the images slide before one's eyes in a continual cascade of form and meaning. (Ansel Adams)

Age acquires no value save through thought and discipline. (James Truslow Adams)

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young. (Joseph Addison)

But time growing old teaches all things. (Aeschylus)

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich)

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. (Muhammad Ali)

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred. (Woody Allen)

Of course now that I am retired I see it from a totally different perspective, the bad days just don't look so bad to me, and I try to share that with Michael. (Mario Andretti)

The end of all my labors has come. All that I have written appears to me as much straw after the things that have been revealed to me. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

- b.ca. 446 BC d.ca. 386 BC...
The old are in a second childhood. (Aristophanes)

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. (Louis Armstrong)

As one gets older, it happens that in the morning one fails to remember the airplane trip to be taken in a few hours or the lecture scheduled for the afternoon. (Rudolf Arnheim)

-ca.AD 400...
Now that I am old and infirm I fear I shall no more be able to roam among the beautiful mountains... I can only paint my pictures and spread my colour over the cloud-topped mountain to transmit for future ages the hidden meaning which lies beyond all description in words. (Chinese Artist)

The best way to judge a life is to ask yourself, 'Did I make the best use of the time I had?' (Arthur Ashe)

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. (Herbert Henry Asquith)

I don't want to be the oldest performer in captivity... I don't want to look like a little old man dancing out there. (Fred Astaire)

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. (Margaret Atwood)

Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long time. (Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber)

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long. (Marcus Aurelius)

Age breeds caution and a yearning for security. Youth invites risk and challenge. As we grow older it becomes important to be able to balance our sensibilities with our curiosities. (Elizabeth Azzolina)

Always I'm feeling, 'You're never going to work again.' That's going to happen one day, but I hope I'm not alive. (Lauren Bacall)

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon)

How disappointing to discover we aren't going to be young and strong and live forever... The challenge and the fascination of artistic creation is the best distraction in the world... we're the lucky ones. (Janet Badger)

People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately. (Russell Baker)

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. (Lucille Ball)

The only thing I regret about my past life is the length of it. If I had my past life over again I'd make all the same mistakes – only sooner. (Tallulah Bankhead)

Neither age, intelligence, nor acquired wisdom alone guarantees a long life. However, only an acquired wisdom that comes with age allows you to see what benefits there may be in being stupid and dying young. (Che Baraka)

Painting is almost like a religious experience, which should go on and on. Age just gives you the freedom to do some things you've never done before. Great work can come at any stage of your life. (Will Barnet)

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. (John Barrymore)

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. (Bernard Baruch)

- interview with Carol Crenna, December 15, 2012...
I take two walks up hills each day, and bike ride each morning. I also have an exercise bike to increase my heart rate. My wife and I have been going to a personal trainer for weights and balance twice a week for 10 years. My balance has improved tremendously and the weights decrease my age. I only feel 52, not 82. (Robert Bateman)

When you get to be my age, you begin to count how many Mays you have left - the best time of year for flowers and birds in North America. (Robert Bateman)

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it. (Mary Catherine Bateson)

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny. (Simone de Beauvoir)

We grow neither better nor worse as we grow old, but more like ourselves. (May Lamberton Becker)

For some reason I can't explain, artists and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music, you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age. (Joshua Bell)

I'm glad I haven't lived in vain. (Saul Bellow)

Nothing makes a man feel older than to hear a band coming up the street and not to have the impulse to rush downstairs and out on to the sidewalk. (Robert Benchley)

Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. (Jack Benny)

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory. (Arthur Christopher Benson)

A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the oneself that there is no self left to die. (Bernard Berenson)

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying. (John Berger)

I hope I never get so old I get religious. (Ingmar Bergman)

When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying. But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It's like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about. (Ingmar Bergman)

I don't worry about it because we are all growing old. If I were the only one I would worry. But we're all in the same boat, and all of my friends are coming with me. We all go toward old age. How many years left we don't know. We just have to accept it. (Ingrid Bergman)

When you're young, you say what you feel. When you're adult, you speak what you think. When you grow old, you listen to what nature says. (Toba Beta)

longevity, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death. (Ambrose Bierce)

age, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit. (Ambrose Bierce)

-when asked, at age 97, at what age the sex drive goes...
You'll have to ask somebody older than me. (Eubie Blake)

I know a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty than they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone. (Robert Bly)

Age has given me a serenity, and an understanding of who I am and what my limits are. (Barbara Boldt)

To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart – and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love. (Karl von Bonstetten)

I don't mind growing old. I'm just not used to it. (Victor Borge)

- at age 80...
I work more now perhaps because I know that there is so little time left. (Fernando Botero)

I often think about death, and it saddens me to leave this world and not be able to paint more. I love it so much. (Fernando Botero)

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved. (Elizabeth Bowen)

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left? (David Bowie)

With age, art and life become one. (Georges Braque)

The older you get, the fewer things it seems too late to do. (Robert Brault)

Looking back you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life - and it was you. It is not too late to find that person again. (Robert Brault)

The comic page is dying; I didn't want to go with it. (Berkely Breathed)

People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart. (Bertolt Brecht)

As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things. (Po Bronson)

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, with courage to endure. (Emily Bronte)

I'm happy to report that my inner child is still ageless. (James Broughton)

I figure I'm still good for painting until 95 or thereabouts. (Bern Will Brown)

I'm twice as old, but I feel good. (James Brown)

You know you're old when you've lost all your marvels. (Merry Browne)

Therefore I summon age / To grant youth's heritage. (Robert Browning)

What Youth deemed crystal, / Age finds out was dew. (Robert Browning)

Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be, / The last of life, for which the first was made. (Robert Browning)

What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold. (Robert Browning)

To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin. (Martin Buber)

This is a wonderful way to celebrate an 80th birthday. I wanted to be 65 again, but they wouldn't let me - Homeland Security. (Art Buchwald)

I just don't want to die the same day Castro dies. (Art Buchwald)

Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked. (Pearl S. Buck)

It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill-placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

As an artist grows older, he has to fight disillusionment and learn to establish the same relation to nature as an adult, as he had when a child. (Charles Burchfield)

This is an adventure. I love what we do. The day before I die, I want a painting half finished on the easel. The day I die, I want to yearn to finish it. (John Burk)

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth. (Edmund Burke)

But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment. (Fanny Burney)

Retire? I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the only one left. (George Burns)

By the time you're eighty years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it. (George Burns)

At my age flowers scare me. (George Burns)

Old guys can still do fun things. (George H.W. Bush)

Aging's alright - better than the alternative, which is not being here. (George H.W. Bush)

- b.1835 d.1902...
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

Young men, listen to an old man to whom old men listened when he was young. (Augustus Caesar)

As a white candle / In a holy place, / So is the beauty / Of an aged face. (Joseph Campbell)

- Lochiel's Warning, 1801
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, / And coming events cast their shadows before. (Thomas Campbell)

The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he dies blind. (Albert Camus)

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. (George Carlin)

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. (Thomas Carlyle)

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us. (Thomas Carlyle)

I would like to continue being radical. As you get older, some of the world catches up and it's passed you. In the '60s you were on the crest of a wave because you were part of the wave. I don't want be a stick in the mud and do the same thing as I did last year, I want to do something different and see what happens. (Anthony Caro)

Twenty can't be expected to tolerate sixty in all things, and sixty gets bored stiff with twenty's eternal love affairs. (Emily Carr)

It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash. (Emily Carr)

Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens. (Lillian Carter)

Middle age is when a guy keeps turning off lights for economical rather than romantic reasons. (Lillian Carter)

An old man's memories, like his bones, grow sharp with age and show their true shapes. (Joyce Cary)

To retire is the beginning of death. (Pablo Casals)

- at age 95...
I am perhaps the oldest musician in the world. I am an old man but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life, and to say things to the world that are true. (Pablo Casals)

Of course, I continue to play and to practice. I think I would do so if I lived for another hundred years. (Pablo Casals)

- Journey to the End of the Night...
Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? (Louis-Ferdinand Celine)

I am old and ill, and I have sworn to die painting. (Paul Cezanne)

I am a child who is getting on. (Marc Chagall)

Youth is something very new: Twenty years ago no one mentioned it. (Coco Chanel)

- All Fools, act 5, sc.1 (1605)...
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools. (George Chapman)

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

Music is nothing separate from me. It is me. I can't retire from music any more than I can retire from my liver. You'd have to remove the music from me surgically - like you were taking out my appendix. (Ray Charles)

Life is very short... but I would like to live four times and if I could, I would set out to do no other things than I am seeking now to do. (William Merritt Chase)

Aging isn't that bad if you consider the alternatives. (Maurice Chevalier)

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years. Most people believe that aging is universal but there are biological organisms that never age. (Deepak Chopra)

Good gracious! What there is to admire and how little time there is to see it in! For the first time one begins to envy Methuselah. (Winston Churchill)

I'm at the age where I don't need an acid trip to feel naked... to feel that I don't exist. Now a self-portrait is almost a reminder to me that I do exist. (Francesco Clemente)

When our memories outweigh our dreams, it is then that we become old. (Bill Clinton)

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face. (Leonard Cohen)

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans. (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly. (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine. (Joan Collins)

Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life. (Kitty O'Neill Collins)

A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present? (Confucius)

Longevity is the revenge of talent upon genius. (Cyril Connolly)

One doesn't age while one is painting. (Natalie Barrett Cook)

Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist begin to change places. (E. Joseph Cossman)

In our heads we're all about 33 years old. (Doug Coupland)

Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down. (Malcolm Cowley)

Be kind to an old man. (Walter Cronkite)

By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere. (Billy Crystal)

When you're young, try to be realistic; as you get older, become idealistic. You'll live longer. (Anthony J. D'Angelo)

I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table. (Rodney Dangerfield)

If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied could thus have been kept active through use. (Charles Darwin)

Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally. (Ram Dass)

Your life is finite, your death is guaranteed. Rather than wait 'til old age before regarding each day as precious, you have the choice to regard each day as precious right now. (Jeff Davidson)

Old age ain't no place for sissies. (Bette Davis)

I didn't hate being 60 as much as I had 50. (Sammy Davis, Jr.)

- Unweaving the Rainbow...
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. (Richard Dawkins)

The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it. (Doris Day)

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty. (Edgar Degas)

-on his deathbed...
Damn, and just when I was starting to get it! (Edgar Degas)

It just isn't the way you've been told. Let me give you an example: Time makes no sense. It really doesn't apply to me; it doesn't fit. My hair gets thin and I can't stay up all night the way I used to. But I don't change... (Arthur Deikman)

We turn not older with the years but newer every day. (Emily Dickinson)

With young people everything is much more on the surface – all the emotions; when you get older you know how to hide things. (Rineke Dijkstra)

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty... But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out. (Phyllis Diller)

You know you're old if they have discontinued your blood type. (Phyllis Diller)

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret. (Benjamin Disraeli)

We all get heavier as we get older because there's a lot more information in our heads. (Vlade Divac)

Don't you think it astonishing that, at 58, I am still working at improving my career? (Placido Domingo)

I'm less convinced of my convincing-ness the older I get. (Gord Downie)

Reason is a crutch for age, but youth is strong enough to walk alone. (John Dryden)

The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it. (John Dryden)

The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages. (Will Durant)

Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked. (Lawrence Durrell)

When we grow old, there can only be one regret - not to have given enough of ourselves. (Eleonora Duse)

Now that I'm retired, I can have all the contemplative time I can consume. (Nic East)

Old age transfigures or fossilizes. (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)

In youth we learn; in age we understand. (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)

Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so. (Tryon Edwards)

Though age and infirmity overtake me and I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me still to be thankful for life and for time's oldest memories that are good and sweet, and may the evening's twilight find me gentle still. (Max Ehrmann)

Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well. (Eight-year-old)

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. (George Eliot)

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down. (T. S. Eliot)

For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh education, and there is no stage for which so little educational preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period. (Havelock Ellis)

As we grow old... the beauty steals inward. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Being an artist and having to be responsible for the art that you make is really quite challenging, and as you get older it becomes more and more difficult. (Tracey Emin)

One of the few advantages to not being beautiful is that one usually gets better-looking as one gets older. I am, in fact, at this very moment gaining my looks. (Nora Ephron)

If you have anything better to be doing when death overtakes you, get to work on that. (Epictetus)

Do artists inevitably suffer a waning of their powers as they grow older? I would like to think that, unlike athletes, for example, we can just keep getting better and better. (Michael Epp)

If only youth knew, if only age could. (Henri Estienne)

Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age. (William Feather)

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young. (William Feather)

I didn't know that painters and writers retired. They're like soldiers - they just fade away. (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

I have no age when I walk into my studio. Age gets left behind out there, along with the dirty dishes and the dust balls. (Cathy Fink)

Please stop debating about whether or not I aged well. Youth and beauty are not accomplishments, they're the temporary happy by-products of time and/or DNA. Don't hold your breath for either. (Carrie Fisher)

What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing. (Gustave Flaubert)

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man. (Felix Frankfurter)

Aging will create the music of the coming century. (Betty Friedan)

Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength. (Betty Friedan)

Artists of all sorts remain youthful for so long, and in many cases attain a grand old age. The explanation is that they live in an almost permanent condition of stimulation and excitement. (Egon Friedell)

A great way to find out what you want from life is to write your own epitaph. (Libbie Fudim)

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together. (Robert Fulghum)

Young people have an almost biological destiny to be hopeful. (Marshall Ganz)

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old. (James A. Garfield)

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. (Jose Ortega Y Gasset)

Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken. (Paul Gauguin)

I will stay in my bed! (Jean Paul Gaultier)

It may well be that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet and their like contain beauties which escape the notice of such old romantic heads as ours, already streaked with silver threads. (Theophile Gautier)

Our learning power can improve with age if we awaken the power of Curiosita. (Michael J. Gelb)

As we grow older, we realize just how limiting were our earlier conceptions. Art is something else. Art is fluid, transmutable, open-ended, never complete, and never perfect. Art is an event. (Robert Genn)

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. (Edward Gibbon)

There is still no cure for the common birthday. (John Glenn)

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed. (Vincent van Gogh)

Ah, I hope to live to 87 and drink from the the goblet of life to the dregs. (Theo van Gogh, film director)

I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. (Oliver Goldsmith)

As you grow older you realize that art has an enormous effect. It's frightening sometimes to think of the effect that we can have. (Andy Goldsworthy)

No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else. (Katharine Graham)

When people tell you how young you look, they are telling you how old you are. (Cary Grant)

Youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms. (Thomas Gray)

Art is eternally young, but the poet ages. If only he remained as young as art! If only it aged with him! (Franz Grillparzer)

I finally figured it out, I finally figured out how to find some peace and happiness. I sure would hate for the man upstairs to take me now. But at least I did figure it out. (Lewis Grizzard)

There are some who start their retirement long before they stop working. (Robert Half)

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. (Lynn Hall)

We do not necessarily improve with age: for better or worse we become more like ourselves. (Peter Hall)

Time goes by, reputation increases, ability declines. (Dag Hammarskjold)

When I was younger and less experienced I was more daring in my work. Though my anatomy was off, my technique was sloppy and my dimensions appeared flat, I was trying more difficult things than I do now. (Christina Hans)

As we get older we come to have more faith in our own abilities to be both frail, lost, out of time and uninspired and to know that the loss of focus is giving us a wider scope, a richer experience to bring to our lives and our art. (Cherie Hanson)

Old brains can function beautifully when stimulated. It's learning for learning's sake without worrying about all the stuff young people have to face. (Cathie Harrison)

I'm now at the age where I've got to prove that I'm just as good as I never was. (Rex Harrison)

Retiring is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn't take any practice. (Paul Harvey)

The years don't always add wisdom, but they do add perspective. (Paul Harvey)

Twenty is in hot haste to become a year older and cast its first vote, which Forty will know was cast like the legendary pearls. (Henry S. Haskins)

The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn. (Henry S. Haskins)

-interview by Gina Mazza...
Getting older is a period of great opportunity to sift out the relevant from the irrelevant. (David R. Hawkins)

When a man is sixty or seventy, he may be able to do a thing and the whole world rejoices. You can't begin too early, for this is not a thing of a month or a day. (Charles Hawthorne)

Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary. (Ernest Hemingway)

Age should be ignored as much as possible. Find something you love to do, and never retire. (Carmen Herrera)

I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back. (Hermann Hesse)

Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five. (Joel Hildebrand)

I did a load of medicine cabinets a long time ago and I named them after Sex Pistols songs. I suppose I must be getting old if I'm naming work after Philip Larkin poems. (Damien Hirst)

I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work. (William Ernest Hocking)

When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing. (David Hockney)

I think young people have a wonderful reaction to color because it's not screwed up by too many references. (Jim Hodges)

Whether one is twenty, forty, or sixty; whether one has succeeded, failed or just muddled along; whether yesterday was full of sun or storm, or one of those dull days with no weather at all, life begins each morning! (Leigh Mitchell Hodges)

At seventy-three I learned a little about the real structure of animals, plants, birds, fishes and insects. Consequently when I am eighty I'll have made more progress. At ninety I'll have penetrated the mystery of things. At a hundred I shall have reached something marvellous, but when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, the smallest dot, will be alive. (Katsushika Hokusai)

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside us. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Only think of my being alive with a reputation! (Winslow Homer)

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap. (Bob Hope)

Growing old is not growing up. (Douglas Horton)

A young man is a theory, an old man is a fact. (Edgar Watson Howe)

I am hoping that, with the added wisdom of old age, I can still look ahead for an improvement in tone, line, colour and composition. (E. J. Hughes)

Age is a matter of feeling, not of years. (Washington Irving)

As we age, fewer and fewer things in the world around us lend themselves to inspiration. Some of us continue to toss in the chum anyway, and hope for a hit. (Maryanne Jacobsen)

- The Summer Book...
I know I do everything. I've been doing everything for an awfully long time, and I've seen and lived as hard as I could, and it's been unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable. But now I have the feeling everything is gliding away from me, and I don't remember, and I don't care, and yet now is right when I need it. (Tove Jansson)

The heads of strong old age are beautiful beyond all grace of youth. (Robinson Jeffers)

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am. (Sarah Orne Jewett)

The only people I have ever seen paint successfully, consistently, with great authority, unselfconsciously and without fear of failing were about four years old. (Brian Johnson)

Regardless of how old we may be chronologically, it's never too late to redefine who we believe ourselves to be. (Dennis Merritt Jones)

I'd rather have ten years of superhypermost than live to be seventy sitting in some goddamn chair watching TV. (Janis Joplin)

The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid. (Carl Gustav Jung)

- Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels...
I like being old, even if the names I hear are more and more unfamiliar. Maybe, to paraphrase Goethe who said that, "Youth is wasted on the young," we should add that "Age can be wasted on the aged," unless one's capacity to wonder increases. (Wolf Kahn)

The boomers' biggest impact will be on eliminating the term 'retirement' and inventing a new stage of life... the new career arc. (Rosabeth Moss Kanter)

Being an artist is a very long game. It is not a 10-year game. I hope I'll be around making art when I'm 80. (Anish Kapoor)

Most painters, when they get older, they get worse. And the real good ones get better. This is, like, my stab at saying 'I got better.' (Alex Katz)

At the end of my life, is it better to say that I empowered people to make great stuff, or that I died with a net worth of $10 billion? Obviously I'm picking the former, although I would not mind both. (Guy Kawasaki)

...I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain... (John Keats)

Today I honor the boy, knowing that he knew far more about manhood than he thought he knew. (Sam Keen)

There is no peace to be taken / With poets who are young, / For they worry about the wars to be fought / and the songs that must be sung. (Joyce Kilmer)

I love old people... They don't care. They dress as they please, eat what they want, and are indifferent to reaction when they say what we wish we had the guts to say. They found themselves decades ago... (Jackie Knott)

I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent. (Kathe Kollwitz)

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. (Madeleine L'Engle)

When we are young and again when we are old, we depend heavily on the affection of others. Between these stages we usually feel that we can do everything without help from others and that other people's affection is simply not important. But at this stage I think it is very important to keep deep human affection. (Dalai Lama)

I can truthfully say, in arts I have pretty much seen and done it all and, at my age, I have no patience with wide-eyed artists fooling themselves about their place in history. We should know by now that it is the whim of the elite few who set the rules... those who have fooled themselves into believing that they are God's gift to the ages. (Don Lambert)

Age has given me the gift of me; it just gave me what I was always longing for, which was to get to be the woman I've already dreamt of being. Which is somebody who can do rest and do hard work and be a really constant companion, a constant, tender-hearted wife to myself. (Anne Lamott)

Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age. (Walter Savage Landor)

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind. (Timothy Leary)

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you. (Fran Lebowitz)

It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year. (Tom Lehrer)

We are getting to be of an age when it is difficult to grow new friends; we haven't the energy, the time to cultivate; each one gone is a permanent impoverishment. (John Leonard, critic)

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others. (Sam Levenson)

A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colors would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age. (Wyndham Lewis)

I feel young all the time because every morning I wake up at six o'clock and I have something new in my mind from when I was sleeping, and I want to get up and do it. (Hui Lin Liu)

For age is opportunity no less / Than youth itself, though in another dress, / And as the evening twilight fades away / The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

The thing that's interesting as you get older as an artist is that the biggest challenge seems to be: how do you stay relevant? (Robert Longo)

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon. (James Russell Lowell)

This middle age thing is a little weird. Some friends and mentors are gone, and there's a very forward-looking new generation coming up behind me. So it's very much finding my own place. (Yo-Yo Ma)

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. (Niccolo Machiavelli)

It goes against an artist's grain to retire. But whether he retires or not, he will age... What work will get done in the remaining time? ...Can he find a little peace in this twilight? Or must he still rush on, restlessly and hungrily, to the very end? (Eric Maisel)

Shouldn't it give us pause that the oldest works of art are as impressive today in their beauty and spontaneity as they were many thousands of years ago? (Kasimir Malevich)

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something. (Maxwell Maltz)

The sun sets, man dies. It is right. But what a pity not to be able to paint any more. (Antonio Mancini)

By the age of fifty, you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth. (Marya Mannes)

I'm much more concerned about what artists think. But as you get older you tend to get much more isolated; you're not out in the bar, having long drunken arguments on the benefits of your work vs. someone else's. It's hard to know how people are looking at it, and you don't get much feedback. The written critical stuff seems to be the feedback, but that's hard to interpret. (Brice Marden)

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old; they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough. (Groucho Marx)

From Bonheur de Vivre – I was thirty-five then – to this cut-out – I am eighty-two – I have not changed; not in the way my friends mean who want to compliment me, no matter what, on my good health, but because all this time I have looked for the same things, which I have perhaps realized by different means... (Henri Matisse)

-on dying...
I felt that in my case an exception would be made. (W. Somerset Maugham)

When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully. (W. Somerset Maugham)

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form. (Andre Maurois)

At this time when I turn 50, because so there's many of my friends and family who didn't get to see 50-years-old, and so, I'm celebrating for them too. (Reba McEntire)

- Boy's Life...
Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know it's happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you 'sir.' It just happens. (Robert R. McGammon)

There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later. (Mignon McLaughlin)

Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire. (Margaret Mead)

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. (H. L. Mencken)

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft. (H. L. Mencken)

Don't just count your years, make your years count. (George Meredith)

Only uncomfortable chairs become antiques; the comfortable ones wear out. (Bruce M. Miller)

Don't think like old people. (Damar Minyak)

I know I shall not live very long... If I've painted three good pictures, then I shall leave gladly with flowers in my hand and my hair. (Paula Modersohn-Becker)

I'm getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but... I'm increasingly obsessed by the need to render what I experience, and I'm praying that I'll have a few more good years left to me... (Claude Monet)

I want to die young at a ripe old age. (Ashley Montagu)

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent. (Michel de Montaigne)

Nobody is ever too old to dream. And dreams never grow old. (Lucy Maud Montgomery)

If only the rest of our body could age so well as our eyes... (Brad Michael Moore)

- Culture in the City, poem...
I do not hope to turn / To see the ageing moon, / Our lives are measured finally / By the twist of a coffee spoon. (Stephen Morris)

As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers her brimming cups in endless variety... decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music ever playing. (John Muir)

Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten. (Lewis Mumford)

My breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was fifty years old. But at that time I felt as though I had the strength for new deeds and ideas. (Edvard Munch)

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they're gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you're going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home. (Alice Munro)

It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself. (Hector Hugh Munro)

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else. (Ogden Nash)

Lucky for me, as old as I am, I can still change. (Alice Neel)

As I turn 91... I have to admit my hours at the easel have diminished. (LeRoy Neiman)

I never feel age... If you have creative work, you don't have age or time. (Louise Nevelson)

With my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and 60. (Jack Nicholson)

I think of myself as no more than 60. What I could do at 60, I can still do now. (Oscar Niemeyer)

When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity - but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. (Eugene O'Neill)

It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won't come back. (Peter O'Toole)

The secret of long life is double careers. One to about age sixty, then another for the next thirty years. (David Ogilvy)

The soul never ages. My soul dances without my feet. I am the music. (Alev Oguz)

- Messenger...
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? (Mary Oliver)

I remember way back when I was young, 10 years ago. (Charles Olson)

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. (George Orwell)

Don't clap too hard – it's a very old building. (John James Osborne)

My older son who is, I think, here tonight, is forty-one years old. Which is odd because so am I. (Robert B. Parker)

Youth is a mortal wound. (Katherine Paterson)

We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully - for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: What do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up. (Randy Pausch)

Age is not a handicap. Age is nothing but a number. It is how you use it. (Ethel Payne)

Live your life and forget your age. (Norman Vincent Peale)

You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left. (Itzhak Perlman)

Aging for me has been a natural catalyst; it allowed my thoughts to clear, much as if I'd been drinking all night and then found enlightenment in a morning hangover. (Jim Pescott)

When you are a young person, the world is yours. You can do the impossible. (Philippe Petit)

-said in a letter to The Oldie magazine after being voted Consort of the Year...
There is nothing like it for morale to be reminded that the years are passing - ever more quickly - and that bits are dropping off the ancient frame. But it is nice to be remembered at all. (Prince Philip)

It takes a very long time to become young. (Pablo Picasso)

I began to understand my sensations, to know what I wanted, at around the age of forty – but only vaguely. At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it. (Camille Pissarro)

About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age. (Gloria Pitzer)

An aged painter cannot help but accept the fact that his work belongs in the past. Younger painters have leaped into the phenomenon called contemporary, where it would be foolish of me to try to enter. But I can claim my own phenomenon... (Joseph Plaskett)

Fighting aging is like the War on Drugs. It's expensive, does more harm than good, and has been proven to never end. (Amy Poehler)

Some old men continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example. (Alexander Pope)

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight. (Ezra Pound)

Growing old's like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed. (Anthony Powell)

When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going. (Joseph Priestley)

There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle. (proverb)

Grey hairs are honorable. (Latin proverb)

It is to live twice to be able to enjoy the retrospect of your past life. (Latin proverb)

I'm working, but there is so much still to be done! And it frightens me to think of my weight of years. But on we go, without fear or hesitation! (Giacomo Puccini)

We are all artists and we are all aging, but what a way to go! (Carl Purcell)

Birthdays: What is not a tombstone is a milestone. (Tanya Radic)

I grew up in front of a television. I guess I'll grow old inside of one. (Gilda Radner)

There's a moment for everyone when you fall into your own shadow and the fact is that it's your shadow and you're forced to live in it. And this is nothing to celebrate or not celebrate. It simply is. (Robert Rauschenberg)

Let's face it, few of us get a childhood that doesn't damage some part of our spirit, but as we age, we can heal ourselves. (Laury Ravenstein)

You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly. (Ronald Reagan)

It's depressing when you're still around and your albums are out of print. (Lou Reed)

I'm too old to do things by half. (Lou Reed)

To take up painting late in life is admirable because it is probably the most difficult thing you'll ever try. It will consume the rest of your life... So go for it, work hard, and above all learn to enjoy the process because that is your true reward. (William F. Reese)

The neat thing about art is there is no end to it. I can do this when I'm 95. As long as I have a hand that will move and a brain that will work, I can keep painting. (Todd Reifers)

Life etches itself onto our faces as we grow older, showing our violence, excesses or kindnesses. (Rembrandt)

The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

It's going to be really weird when I'm 80 years old, in a walker, and people are still calling me America's sweetheart. We need a new one. (Mary Lou Retton)

Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter. (Jean Paul Richter)

It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age. (Mary Roberts Rinehart)

-on seeing a portrait by Sargent...
This special and only genuine Henry James' face was not 'delivered' until he was a comparatively old man, so that for a greater part of his life he went about in disguise. (W. Graham Robertson)

Youth sees too far to see how near it is / To seeing farther. (Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Very interesting for an old duffer like me to try his hand at something new. If I don't do that once in a while, I might just turn into a fossil, you know! (Norman Rockwell)

I don't know how I got over the hill without getting to the top. (Will Rogers)

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that's Memoirs. (Will Rogers)

I've learned... that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes. (Andy Rooney)

Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young. (Theodore Roosevelt)

I hate getting old, but I'm sticking with it! (James Rosenquist)

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something. (Jean Rostand)

- Everyman...
Old age isn't a battle: old age is a massacre. (Philip Roth)

-on Matisse's paper cutouts...
Though produced by a very old man who was mortally ill, they seem to come from the springtime of the world. (John Russell)

One of the final challenges for human beings is to get old with as much verve and gumption as possible. (Alison Judson Ryerson)

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. (Saki)

The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another 'I' is beginning, and so far I have not had to complain of her. (George Sand)

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older one climbs with surprising strides. (George Sand)

What's remarkable about old age is not that we wear out but that we last so long in the grip of gravity. (Scott Russell Sanders)

-on finishing Act Two: An Art Critic in the Postmodern Era...
I'm desperately trying to get it done before I go belly up. (Irving Sandler)

I reject the title of senior citizen. I think of myself as being chronologically advantaged. (Larry E. Santucci)

I only admit to being of "advanced years" if there is a discount involved. (Larry E. Santucci)

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force. (Dorothy Leigh Sayers)

Artists don't retire; they draw to a conclusion. (Graham Scholes)

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed. (Charles Schulz)

I'm going to be 60, and I'm almost used to myself. (Martin Scorsese)

On the one hand, you're the same person, but as you get older, you change somewhat, and you never know how it's going to affect your work. (Martin Scorsese)

True aging only happens when the desiccation of the mind exceeds that of the body. (Ian Semple)

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of [writing] something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter. (Maurice Sendak)

I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago. (Maurice Sendak)

And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, / And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, / And thereby hangs a tale. (William Shakespeare)

Spend all you have before you die, and do not outlive yourself. (George Bernard Shaw)

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time. (George Bernard Shaw)

It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes. (Gail Sheehy)

I love the fact that there are more and more young people out there who still want to make a flat two-dimensional surface come alive with three dimensional magic. (Burton Silverman)

I don't need glasses, but I've just reached the age where curiosity is greater than vanity. (Red Skelton)

Let me advise thee not to talk of thyself as being old. There is something in Mind Cure, after all, and if thee continually talks of thyself as being old, thee may perhaps bring on some of the infirmities of age. At least I would not risk it if I were thee. (Hannah Whitall Smith)

My work life makes much less sense now than 20 years ago. It's Humpty-Dumpty-like in a way; I can't put the pieces back together. (Kiki Smith)

I grow old ever learning many things. (Solon)

Never too old to jump on the sofa. (Redenta Soprano)

I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion. (Stephen Spender)

I've played Big Bird for over half my life, and now I'm in my 80s. It does feel older than 79. Someone said it's just a number, and I said, 'No, I genuinely feel older.' (Caroll Spinney)

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality. (Madame de Stael)

I shall not grow conservative with age. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton)

The heyday of woman's life is the shady side of fifty. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton)

If we are strong, and have faith in life and its richness of surprises, and hold the rudder steadily in our hands, I am sure we will sail into quiet and pleasant waters for our old age. (Freya Stark)

On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning - regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light. (Freya Stark)

One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure. (Gertrude Stein)

We are always the same age inside. (Gertrude Stein)

Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof. (Wallace Stevens)

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts. (Adlai Stevenson)

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. (Tom Stoppard)

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older. (Abraham Sutzkever)

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old. (Jonathan Swift)

Age considers; youth ventures. (Rabindranath Tagore)

The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past. (Junichiro Tanizaki)

Sometimes I misstep into something perhaps I shouldn't, but with age comes a thick, high pair of rubber boots to wade through the barnyard. We should all have to get to the dirt and 'muck out' at some point in our lives. (Janice Tanton)

When I was 14, I was the oldest I ever was... I've been getting younger ever since. (Shirley Temple)

I was walking downstairs carrying a drink in one hand and a book in the other. Don't try that after ninety. (Studs Terkel)

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. (Henry David Thoreau)

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs. (James Thurber)

The old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. (J. R. R. Tolkien)

The longer we live, the more we are obliged to confront the deeper meaning of what it is we do. (David Toop)

As a kid, I dreamed of having a house with secret passages and a room where it rained 24 hours a day. The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7. (Guillermo del Toro)

I can paint until I'm forty. After that I intend to dry up. (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man. (Leon Trotsky)

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. (Mark Twain)

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. (Mark Twain)

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. (Mark Twain)

O, how in our waning days / We love more tenderly and more obsessively... / Shine on, shine on, the parting rays / Of our last love, our setting sun! (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)

Do not fear the aging of the body for it is the body's way of seeking the root. (Lao Tzu)

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. (Samuel Ullman)

Now that I am sixty, I see why the idea of elder wisdom has passed from currency. (John Updike)

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't. (John Updike)

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps fewer wrong-minded people than thoughtless. (Marquis de Vauvenargues)

I saw Michelangelo at work. He had passed his sixtieth year and although he was not very strong, yet in a quarter of an hour he caused more splinters to fall from a very hard block of marble than three young masons in three or four times as long... (Blaise de Vigenere)

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong. (Charles Wadsworth)

Not everyone grows to be old, but everyone has been younger than he is now. (Evelyn Waugh)

Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions. (Orson Welles)

-shortly before his death, 1946...
I would dearly love to take up the brush again, but I realize that I am an old man and that I cannot set the world afire. (William Wendt)

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death. (Edith Wharton)

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19. (E. B. White)

I have so many projects to work on I'm going to have to live to at least 120 to get some of them done. (Jack White)

Once you grow up and discover yourself as a human being. you look at things for what they are. (Marco Pierre White)

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything. (Oscar Wilde)

Alas, I am dying beyond my means. (Oscar Wilde)

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing. (Tom Wolfe)

To a man of sixty... one of the grimmest reminders of the Reaper's approach comes when his doctors, the people who have attended to his body for decades, begin retiring on him... or dying on him... or both. (Tom Wolfe)

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write. (Virginia Woolf)

And yet the wiser mind / Mourns less for what age takes away / Than what it leaves behind. (William Wordsworth)

It's a shock for me to go through and see all those years of painting my life, which is very personal for me. It's a very difficult thing for an artist to look back at his work. (Andrew Wyeth)

I am continually amazed at how old young has become. Didn't we, like our grandchildren, begin with a childhood we thought would never end? Now, all of a sudden, I'm older than my parents were when I thought they were old. (Lois Wyse)

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young / And weep because I know all things now. (William Butler Yeats)

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep. (William Butler Yeats)

In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom... And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing. (Edward Young)

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here. (Emile Zola)