Famous People on Aging

Collected by Jim Mahood

At some time or other most writers sound off on the subject of aging. Following are a few favorites:

“It’s boring for a 71-year-old broad to sing about how bad she wants it, even if it is true we frequently want it badly.” —Lena Horne.

“I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.” —Harry Hershfield.

“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes.

“Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.” —Don Marquis.

“First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.” —Leo Rosenberg.

“So, lively brisk old fellow, don’t let age get you down. White hairs or not, you can still be a lover.” —Goethe.

“Men may become old, but they never become good.” —Oscar Wilde.

“The only good thing about the decline of my memory is that it has brought me closer to my mother, for she and I now forget everything at the same time.” —Bill Cosby.

“Old age is a shipwreck.” —Charles de Gaulle.

“Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age. . . . A man of 50 looks as old as Santa Claus to a girl of 20.” —William Feather.

“Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.” —Bertolt Brecht.

“Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age. Nothing does—except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.” —Abigail Van Buren.

“There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you." —Carol Matthau.

“The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.” —Doug Larson.

“Sure I’m for helping the elderly. I’m going to be old myself some day.” —Lillian Carter, in her 80s.

“I grow more intense as I age.” —Florida Scott-Maxwell.

“With age comes the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?” —Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.” —Edith Wharton.

“A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.” —Pindar.

This article was first published in the May, 2006, issue of The Thurston-Mason Senior News.