S. Jay Olshansky Quotes

In Khmer we have a saying that when one is both quite sick and old there remains only one thing, that you die.

All diseases run into one, old age.

People don't die of old age, they die of neglect.

'Aging' has been bad ever since we figured out it led to dying.

You get old, you slow down.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Dying people often become childish.

My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies.

How young can you die of old age?

You never think about your own mortality. At least not until your back gives way when you're 40.

The years that remain are clearly limited. When you're 80, you attend a lot more funerals. A lot more people are having a hard time and are ill.

My grandmother passed away from diabetes. And my father died from heart disease as a result of diabetes. They were in their early 60s.

I'll shoot my age if I have to live to be 105.

Life is better than death. But death comes eventually to everyone. It is something which many in their prime may prefer not to think about. But at 89, I see no point in avoiding the question. What concerns me is: How do I go? Will the end comes swiftly, with a stroke in one of the coronary arteries? Or will it be a stroke in the mind that lays me out in bed for months, semi-comatose? Of the two, I prefer the quick one.

No man should live longer than his teeth.

Often it is fatal to live too long.

The young may die, but the old must!

Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it.

Heads in the Women's Ward On pillow after pillow lies The wild white hair and staring eyes; Jaws stand open; necks are stretched With every tendon sharply sketched; A bearded mouth talks silently To someone no one else can see. Sixty years ago they smiled At lover, husband, first-born child. Smiles are for youth. For old age come Death's terror and delirium.

I don't feel old, except in the morning once in a while, when I can't turn over properly and say, "What's that? When did that happen?" Our brain doesn't accept that. We're geared to last.

Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die.

And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity.

Let us ease the Roman people of their continual care, who think it long to await the death of an old man.

With decrepitude, longevity has overshot the mark.

One thing is sure, there are just two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, and the other is by accident.