Gordon B. Hinckley Quotes

You didn't want to die. Most mortals don't, even if they find themselves in as desolate and soul-destroying a spot as you. Almost all of those who take their own lives wish at the last moment that they hadn't. They see at the end how much they've given up, how precious life is, even when it's treated them like dirt and crushed their dreams. Many think they've passed beyond hope, but they never really have, not until they pass beyond life itself. Alas, that knowledge comes too late for most would-be-suicides and they die with regret. Very few are offered the chance that you have been handed.

You know you're old when you get a lifetime achievement award. It's a message you've been around too long.

I'm not tough anymore, I'm 82.

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

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

Beyond age, leaf withered, man goes three footed no stronger than a child is, a dream that falters in daylight.

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

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

I warn you not to fall ill, I warn you not to get old.

We'll need to make a litter to carry him," said Osha. "No use," said Luwin. "I'm dying, woman." "You can't," said Rickon angrily. "No you can't." Beside him, Shaggydog bared his teeth and growled. The maester smiled. "Hush now, child, I'm much older than you. I can . . . die as I please.

Get ready to die, tell God I say hi.

Tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburdened crawl toward death.

Old men are children once again a dream that sways and wavers into the hard light of day.

Part of the American dream is to live long and die young.

Last words are always harder to remember when no one knows that someone's about to die.

We have lived too long. The great days are past.

An old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as the young man who is unable to embrace it.

Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.

I recently turned 60. Practically a third of my life is over.

To one bent on age, death will come as a release. I feel this quite strongly now that I have grown old myself and have come to regard death like an old debt, at long last to be discharged.

Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.

Indeed, I have, alas! outlived almost every one of my contemporaries. One pays dear for living long.

Alas, how right the ancient saying is: We, who are old, are nothing else but noise And shape. Like mimicries of dreams we go, And have no wits, although we think us wise.

You left me for a dream you had to follow, but I thought goodbye wouldn't last that long.

Maybe I'd never see him again... maybe he'd gone for good... swallowed up, body and soul, in the kind of stories you hear about... Ah, it's an awful thing... and being young doesn't help any... when you notice for the first time... the way you lose people as you go along ... the buddies you'll never see again... never again... when you notice that they've disappeared like dreams... that it's all over... finished... that you too will get lost someday... a long way off but inevitably... in the awful torrent of things and people... of the days and shapes... that pass... that never stop.