J. P. Donleavy Quotes

Then there's that 'You're only as old as you feel' business, which is true to a point, but you can't be Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop forever. Sooner or later, dammit, you're old.

The most important thing is growing old gracefully.

It was formerly a terrifying view to me that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that Nature has provided pleasures for every state.

it sucks to get old...but there's always beer

You have to embrace getting older.

I don't mind growing old. I'm just not used to it.

I'm trying to grow old gracefully. I've got to at least grow old.

How presumptuous they had both been never to consider growing old as an achievement and a challenge. Aging was something they'd both wanted so much to avoid.

I suppose playing an older man is a way of preparing myself for getting older.

You can't stop the aging process. There's only so much oil you can put on your body. I've always just tried to go with my age.

Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it.

Old age is life's parody.

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.

For my own part, I had rather be old only a short time than be old before I really am so.

Aging is a chance to make what was good, great, and what was never so good, better...

Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.

Old age: The estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours into the Great Sea.

Old age is the night of life, as night is the old age of the day. Still, night is full of magnificence; and, for many, it is more brilliant than the day.

We do ourselves and others a disservice when we make old age something to be feared...The longer we live, the more life we possess.

Stop whining about getting old. It's a privilege. A lot of people who are dead wish they were still alive.

There is no place in which to hide when Age comes seeking for his bride.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

Don't worry about middle age: you'll outgrow it.

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

The ordinariness of living to be old is too novel a thing to appreciate.