Lyman Abbott Quotes

Speeches are for the younger men who are going places. And I'm not going anyplace except six feet under the floor of that little chapel adjoining the museum and library at Abilene.

Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age.

I find, to my amazement, that I have reached the age of 90!

This getting old is something. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is sixteen, and she's limping, and she's still living, but she doesn't look at me like she knows. She's not thinking what I'm thinking. It's a cruel trick that we all know the ending.

I think of dying every day... At a certain age, you should be prepared to go at any time.

When you pass 70, you forget your enemies. You think about the nice people instead.

Now I am in my eighties, and I have known the joys and sorrows of a full life. Age, however, has its privileges. One is to reminisce, and another is to reminisce selectively.

I turned 65 and thought, 'Oh my God, I'm a senior. How did this happen?'

I used to think 63 was old.

To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.

I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, That I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.

I never have a thematic intention at the outset. The story informs the theme for me rather than the other way around. But as it happens... this is, at least to a degree, about getting old and the rapid passage of our lives.

Growing old becomes clear to you at a certain point. I think it's after the age of 70 you realize - you begin to actually be convinced - you're growing older.

I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward

Only when your memories are more important to you than your goals are you old.

What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age.

Old age is not synonymous with being 'glad to die.

It was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.

But years hath done this wrong, To make me write too much, and live too long.

When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.

The years have gone by quickly. Death sits in the seat next to me. We make a lovely couple.

My age I will not once lament, / But sing, my time so near is spent.