wisdom of old age Quotes

The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it.

Old age is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure, if you know how to use it. The best morsel is reserved for last.

When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning."

Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf, Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child, As a dream set afloat in the daylight.

It is not the young man who should be considered fortunate but the old man who has lived well, because the young man in his prime wanders much by chance, vacillating in his beliefs, while the old man has docked in the harbor, having safeguarded his true happiness.

Old age spiritualizes people naturally

Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority, that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth.

When one has reached 81... one likes to sit back and let the world turn by itself, without trying to push it.

I know not any season of life that is past more agreeably than virtuous old age.

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.

Old age is an ordeal, of flesh and mind. Of winding down, of slowing down, of dying cells. It's accepting the loss of physical attractiveness and replacing it with the power and wisdom that can only come with old age.

There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.

The advantage of being eighty years old is that one has many people to love.

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.

Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light.

The foolishness of old age does not characterize all who are old, but only the foolish.

[In old age] there is a childlike innocence, often, that has nothing to do with the childishness of senility. The moments become precious . . .

In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it? to which he replied, Hush! if you please: to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master. I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions.

Rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age.

At my age, if I make it up, it's still an old saying.

The heads of strong old age are beautiful beyond all grace of youth.

Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?

Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.