Timeless Wisdom: A Curated Collection of Inspirational Quotes About Old Age

"I don't see why there should be a point where everyone decides you're too old. I'm not too old, and until I decide I'm too old I'll never be too fucking old."

- Lemmy Kilmister

"In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives a message of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage – so long are you young. When the wires are all down and our heart is covered with the snow of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, are you grown old."

- Douglas MacArthur

"A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."

- John Barrymore

"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."

- Sophia Loren

"In the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been."

- David Bowie

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

- C.S. Lewis

"I’ve always said that I will never let an old person into my body. That is, I don’t believe in ‘thinking’ old. Don’t program yourself to break down as you age with thoughts that decline is inevitable."

- Wayne Dyer

"I believe the second half of one’s life is meant to be better than the first half. The first half is finding out how you do it. And the second half is enjoying it."

- Frances Lear

"Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be."

- Robert Browning

"Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength."

- Betty Friedan

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."

- Henry Ford

"Aging happy and well, instead of sad and sick, is at least under some personal control. We have considerable control over our weight, our exercise, our education, and our abuse of cigarettes and alcohol. With hard work and/or therapy, our relationships with our spouses and our coping styles can be changed for the better. A successful old age may lie not so much in our stars and genes as in ourselves."

- George E. Vaillant

"Your 40s are good. Your 50s are great. Your 60s are fab. And 70 is f*@king awesome!"

- Helen Mirren

"The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts and we grow happier as we grow older."

- William Lyon Phelps

"Every year should teach you something valuable; whether you get the lesson is up to you. Every year brings you closer to expressing your whole and healed self."

- Oprah Winfrey

"In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Age is no barrier. It’s a limitation you put on your mind."

- Jackie Joyner-Kersee

"I love living. I love that I’m alive to love my age. There are many people who went to bed just as I did yesterday evening and didn’t wake this morning. I love and feel very blessed that I did."

- Maya Angelou

"Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."

- Albert Einstein

"Aging isn’t about getting old it’s about LIVING… Learning that you can age well, will actually help you to age better… let’s start celebrating and living an engaged life, and stop punishing ourselves for not looking a certain way, and instead holding ourselves accountable for actually taking care of ourselves inside first, knowing the results on the exterior will be a shining side effect."

- Cameron Diaz

"My physical body may be less efficient and less beautiful in old age. But God has given me an enormous compensation: my mind is richer my Soul is broader and my wisdom is at a peak. I am so happy with the riches of my advanced peak age that, contrary to Faust, I would not wish to return to youth."

- Robert Muller

"The trouble is, when a number—your age—becomes your identity, you’ve given away your power to choose your future."

- Richard J. Leider

"You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing."

- George Bernard Shaw

"I’m baffled that anyone might not think women get more beautiful as they get older. Confidence comes with age, and looking beautiful comes from the confidence someone has in themselves."

- Kate Winslet

"The wiser mind mourns less for what age takes away than what it leaves behind."

- William Wordsworth

"You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old."

- George Burns

"Here’s what I know: I’m a better person at fifty than I was at forty-eight … and better at fifty-two than I was at fifty. I’m calmer, easier to live with. All this stuff is in my soul forever. Just don’t get lazy. Work at your relationships all the time. Take care of friendships, hold people you love close to you, take advantage of birthdays to celebrate fiercely. It’s the worrying — not the years themselves — that will make you less of a woman."

- Patti LaBelle

"Relish love in our old age! Aged love is like aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating."

- Leo Buscaglia

"Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get."

- Keith Richards

"Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears."

- John Lennon

"I am appalled that the term we use to talk about aging is ‘anti.’ Aging is as natural as a baby’s softness and scent. Aging is human evolution in its pure form."

- Jamie Lee Curtis

"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

"I have absolutely no objection to growing older. I am a stroke survivor so I am extremely grateful to be aging – I have nothing but gratitude for the passing years. I am aging – lucky, lucky me!"

- Sharon Stone

"It’s like you trade the virility of the body for the agility of the spirit."

- Elizabeth Lesser

"A human being would certainly not grow to be 70 or 80 years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species to which he belongs. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning."

- Carl Jung

"One of the reasons people get old—lose their aliveness—is that they get weighed down by all of their stuff."

- Richard Leider

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter."

- Mark Twain

"I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward."

- Mary Sarton

"Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest."

- Marilyn Ferguson

"Know that you are the perfect age. Each year is special and precious, for you shall only live it once. Be comfortable with growing older."

- Louise Hay

"Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We are not victims of aging, sickness, and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being."

- Deepak Chopra

"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."

- Franz Kafka

"To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth."

- Pearl S. Buck

"It annoys me when people say, ‘Even if you’re old, you can be young at heart!’ Hiding inside this well-meaning phrase is a deep cultural assumption that old is bad and young is good. What’s wrong with being old at heart, I’d like to know? Wouldn’t you like to be loved by people whose hearts have practiced loving for a long time?"

- Susan Moon

"Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."

- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

"For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of the harvest."

- Hasidic saying

"Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!"

- Ingrid Bergman

"If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life."

- Margaret Mead

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Elderly people are like plants. Whereas some go to seed, or to pot, others blossom in the most wonderful ways. I believe beauty competitions should be held only for people over seventy years of age. When we are young, we have the face and figure God gave us. We did nothing to earn our good looks. But as we get older, character becomes etched on our face. Beautiful old people are works of art. Like a white candle in a holy place, so it the beauty of an aged face."

- James Simpson

"Ageing is just another word for living."

- Cindy Joseph

"It's not how old you are. It's how you are old."

- Jules Renard

"When we were small children, we all played dress-up and everybody had a good time. So why stop?"

- Iris Apfel

"One day you will look back and see that all along you were blooming."

- Morgan Harper Nichols

"The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles!"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever."

- Walt Disney

"Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance."

- David Mamet

"Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator."

- Confucius

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm."

- Aldous Huxley

"Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young."

- Fred Astaire

"Old age is no place for sissies."

- Bette Davis

"Let us never know what old age is. Let us know the happiness time brings, not count the years."

- Ausonius

"Old age and the passage of time teach all things."

- Sophocles

"Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success."

- Louisa May Alcott

"It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time."

- Simone de Beauvoir

"Old age is just a record of one's whole life."

- Muhammad Ali

"Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age."

- George Sand

"I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun."

- Virginia Woolf

"With age comes the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?"

- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren’t as black and white, and you become much more tolerant. You can see the good in things much more easily rather than getting enraged as you used to do when you were young."

- Maeve Binchy

"We don’t grow older, we grow riper."

- Pablo Picasso

"Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been."

- Jimmy Buffett

"Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional!"

- Walt Disney

"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."

- Maya Angelou

"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive."

- Dalai Lama

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

- Winston Churchill

"Preparation for old age should begin not later than one's teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement."

- Dwight L. Moody

"The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been."

- Madeleine L'Engle

"Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions."

- Dalai Lama

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."

- Henry Ford

"The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter."

- Satchel Paige

"Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art."

- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

"Getting older is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!"

- Ingrid Bergman

"Those who love deeply never grow old, they may die of old age, but they die young."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional."

- Walt Disney

"By the time you’re 80 years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it."

- George Burns

"Aging is not about how many years have passed, but how much life you’ve embraced."

- Sophia Loren

"Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses."

- Maggie Kuhn

"Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative."

- Maurice Chevalier

"Age is just a number. Life and aging are the greatest gifts that we could possibly ever have."

- Cicely Tyson

"The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it."

- Gabriel García Márquez

"Aging is just another word for living."

- Cindy Joseph

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Growing old is not a disease, it is a triumph."

- Maggie Kuhn

"The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"The glory of the elderly is their insight, their knowledge, and their wisdom."

- Lailah Gifty Akita

"Age is not how old you are but how many years of fun you’ve had."

- Matt Maldre

"You don’t stop laughing when you grow old. You grow old when you stop laughing."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Aging gracefully means being flexible, being open, allowing change, enjoying change, and loving yourself."

- Wendy Wasserstein

"Aging is not a curse but a privilege, and the good news is that we can all become better versions of ourselves with age."

- Mary Buchan

"The best thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been."

- Madeleine L'Engle

"Getting older makes you more alive. More vitality, more interest, more intelligence, more grace, more expansion."

- Jamie Lee Curtis

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

- Morrie Schwartz

"There’s no such thing as aging, but maturing and knowledge. It’s beautiful, I call that beauty."

- Céline Dion

"To care for those who once cared for us is one of the highest honors."

- Tia Walker

"No one is as old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."

- Henry David Thoreau

"I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

"Old age is not a disease, it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses."

- Maggie Kuhn

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart."

- Helen Keller

"It is not how much we give but how much love we put into giving."

- Mother Teresa

"I will never give in to old age until I become old. And I'm not old yet!"

- Tina Turner

"It is not how old you are, but how you are old."

- Jules Renard

"To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age."

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"I dread no more the first white in my hair, Or even age itself, the easy shoe, The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair: Time, doing this to me, may alter too My anguish, into something I can bear"

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

- Mark Twain

"My belief is that it’s a privilege to get older—not everybody gets to get older."

- Cameron Diaz

"The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you're learning you're not old."

- Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

"Education is the best provision for old age."

- Aristotle

"The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone."

- Shannon L. Alder

"One of the many pleasures of old age is giving things up."

- Malcolm Muggeridge

"Those who have no hope pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom."

- Wilfred Owen

"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."

- Robertson Davies

"It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age."

- Margaret Mead

"In youth, the days are short and the years are long. In old age, the years are short and days long."

- Pope Paul VI

"Aging has a wonderful beauty, and we should have respect for that."

- Eartha Kitt

"The ordinary experiences of aging alter and clarify your view of past, present and future."

- Edith Pearlman

"One person caring about another represents life’s greatest value."

- Jim Rohn

"The greatest gift you can give someone is your time, your attention, and your love."

- AARP

"I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another."

- Thomas Jefferson

"The best way to find happiness is by making others happy."

- Robert Ingersoll

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

- Greek Proverb

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else."

- Booker T. Washington

"Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving an impact on people, brings happiness."

- Harold Kushner

"The simple act of caring is heroic."

- Edward Albert

"We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone."

- Ronald Reagan

"Compassion is not just feeling with someone, but seeking to change the situation."

- Stacey Abrams

"A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal."

- Steve Maraboli

"We rise by lifting others."

- Robert Ingersoll

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."

- Aesop

"The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love."

- Hubert H. Humphrey

"The most important thing in the world is family and love."

- John Wooden

"You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."

- Ogden Nash

"Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get, the older you want to get."

- Keith Richards

"That’s another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face."

- Frances McDormand

"I’m just getting older and better."

- Neal Schon

"Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest."

- Larry Lorenzoni

"I’m very pleased to be here. Let’s face it, at my age I’m very pleased to be anywhere."

- George Burns

"Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life."

- Kitty O'Neill Collins

"Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternative."

- Maurice Chevalier

"Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Aging is not about losing beauty but gaining a deeper appreciation for it."

- Eva Longoria

"Gravity and wrinkles are fine with me. They’re a small price to pay for the new wisdom inside my head and my heart."

- Drew Barrymore

"It’s a great thing, getting older. You are who you are; you say what you mean."

- Reese Witherspoon

"Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age."

- Christopher Morley

"It matters not how long we live but how."

- Philip James Bailey

"Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms."

- Mark Twain

"A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality."

- Pindar

"We are always the same age inside."

- Gertrude Stein

"Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week."

- Maggie Kuhn

"Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple."

- Regina Brett

"Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age."

- Hosea Ballou

"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age."

- Victor Hugo

"When it comes to staying young, a mind-lift beats a face-lift any day."

- Marty Buccella

"Age is something that doesn't matter... unless you are a cheese!"

- Billie Burke

"What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease."

- Jean Paul

"Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Old age is a shipwreck."

- Charles de Gaulle

"To me - old age is always ten years older than I am."

- Bernard Baruch

"You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there."

- George Burns

"Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought."

- Emily Dickinson

"There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise."

- Robert Green Ingersoll

"In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us."

- Josh Billings

"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man."

- Leon Trotsky

"I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, because my sins were a hindrance to me."

- Saint Patrick

"But an old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave."

- William Wordsworth

"In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order."

- Will Durant

"Many believe - and I believe - that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him."

- Michelangelo

"If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

- Mae West

"I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet."

- Rita Rudner

"Old age is always 15 years older than I am."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"I'm ancient and cranky and my body's a wreck? If they're willing to accept me and my guilty conscience, why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus? It's like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this IS home."

- Sara Gruen

"I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap."

- Bob Hope

"Save your money. You're going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think."

- Michael Caine

"There is still no cure for the common birthday."

- John Glenn

"Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate."

- Søren Kierkegaard

"Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre."

- Philip Roth

"Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese."

- Luis Buñuel

"Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent."

- Mokokoma Mokhonoana

"All diseases run into one, old age."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I’m at an age where my back goes out more than I do."

- Phyllis Diller

"When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary."

- Walter M. Miller Jr.

"We should give our elders the respect and dignity they deserve, for they have made our lives possible."

"Age is not a barrier to success; it’s a ladder to wisdom."

"I’m not getting older, I’m just becoming a classic."

"I’m not aging, I’m ripening to perfection."

"I’m not aging, I’m just leveling up."

"You know you’re getting old when you have more candles on your cake than friends at your party."

"I’m not old, I’m just well-seasoned."

"Age is just a number, but sometimes that number can be a pain in the neck."

"It's important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle."

"Age is simply the number of years the world has been enjoying you!"