Myrtle Reed Quotes

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.

It's hard to watch something you've done many years ago.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

It is always nice to reflect on how one started.

Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination.

Don't look back, never look back. How often do people tell themselves that after an experience that is exceptionally good (or exceptionally bad?)? Often, I suppose. And the advice usually goes unheeded. Humans were built to look back; that's why we have tat swivel joint in our necks.

In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.

I have to go and say farewell to all the countries that I have been to, if I can. I am 73 now, it is taxing on me.

You know you're old when you've lost all your marvels.

Once, I went speeding past an old couple and smiled as I imagined their conversation: him grumbling about me and her telling him not to be such an old grouch. Then, suddenly I was in tears, thinking, 'I'll never get to be a grumpy old grandpa!'

I am growing old, and my future, so to speak, is already behind me.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

You get older and you see yourself and say, 'God, he's old, who's that?'

I was 22, and 40 was old. To be 40 again!

When I think about it, 20 years really seems like a blink of an eye sometimes. I wish I would have made a more concerted effort to enjoy things along the way.

As I look back over my life, I've been an active person - obviously I was self-absorbed for a period of time.

I'm getting very old and my bones ache. My sins are deserting me, and if I could only have my time over again I'd take care to commit more of them.

I have a lot of growing up to do. But I think, 'Hell, is it too late?'

The real affliction of old age is remorse.

Christina Stead has a Chinese say, "Our old age is perhaps life's decision about us" or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.

The older you get, the better you realize you were.

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

One of the reasons why old people make so many journeys into the past is to satisfy themselves that it is still there.

At eighty things do not occur; they recur.

It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.