Timeless Wisdom: 50 Inspirational Quotes About Getting Older

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Walt Disney

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

- Mark Twain

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

- C.S. Lewis

"Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"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."

- Sophia Loren

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

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

- Dylan Thomas

"Age is an opportunity no less than youth itself."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are."

- Muhammad Ali

"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

"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

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been."

- Mark Twain

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

- Mark Twain

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

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Betty Friedan

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

- Mark Twain

"We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- Wendy Wasserstein

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

- Franz Kafka

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."

- Henry Ford

"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

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

- George Burns

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

- Matt Maldre

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

- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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

- Frank Lloyd Wright

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

- Helen Mirren

"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

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

- Jackie Joyner-Kersee

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

- Ingrid Bergman

"I'm not opposed to aging - even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I'm proud of my age. I'm proud that I've survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I'll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind...for however long it lasts."

- Donna Lynn Hope

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

- David Bowie

"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

"We don’t grow older, we grow riper."

- Pablo Picasso

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

- Morgan Harper Nichols

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

- Philip James Bailey

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"As we grow old, the beauty steals inward."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

"Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul."

- General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur

"The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune."

- English Proverb

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

- Madeleine L'Engle

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

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"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

"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

"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.

"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

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

- Pearl S. Buck

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

- Richard J. Leider

"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

"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

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

- Maggie Kuhn

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

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

- Jimmy Buffett

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

- Walt Disney

"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

"We are always the same age inside."

- Gertrude Stein

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

- Fred Astaire

"Youth has no age."

- Pablo Picasso

"Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough."

- Groucho Marx

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"

- Satchel Paige

"We turn not older with years but newer every day."

- Emily Dickinson

"Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age."

- Jeanne Moreau

"I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel."

- Elizabeth Arden

"We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage."

- Winston Churchill

"In youth we learn; in age we understand."

- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"Life is an adventure. And I'm always looking forward to that next adventure."

- Angela Bassett

"The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain."

- Susan B. Anthony

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

- Mark Twain

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

- Kitty O'Neill Collins

"It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone."

- Andy Rooney

"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

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

- George Burns

"At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At age 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all."

- Ann Landers

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

- Theodore Roosevelt

"There are six myths about old age: 1) that it’s a disease, a disaster. 2) That we are mindless. 3) That we are sexless. 4) That we are useless. 5) That we are powerless. 6) That we are all alike."

- Maggie Kuhn

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

- John Barrymore

"As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, do it."

- Margaret Deland

"Old age isn’t so bad if you consider the alternative."

- Maurice Chevalier

"My face carries all my memories. Why would I erase them?"

- Diane von Furstenberg

"My advice: Don’t waste so much time worrying about your skin or your weight. Develop what you put your hands on in the world."

- Meryl Streep

"Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty."

- Coco Chanel

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

- Reese Witherspoon

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

- Jamie Lee Curtis

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

- George Bernard Shaw

"It`s not how old you are, it`s how you are old."

- Jules Renard

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

- Robert Browning

"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

"No age of life is inglorious. Youth has its merits, but living to a ripe old age is the true statement of value. Aging is the road that we take to discern our character. Fame and fortune can elude us, but character is immortal. We must encounter a sufficient variety of experiences including both failures and accomplishments in order to gain nobility of character."

- Kilroy J. Oldster

"I finally understand that there is no age limit on growth and self-discovery. We see our lives and ourselves in different chapters, different versions, through different perspectives as we age. We are a prism of ourselves. But we cannot clearly see our future until we clearly see ourselves."

- Viola Shipman

"I am not disappointed by my old age. There are still stories to tell, paths to walk, and fire within that refuses to diminish."

- Bhuwan Thapaliya

"How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?"

- Satchel Paige

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

- George Burns

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

- Larry Lorenzoni

"I feel about aging the way William Saroyan said he felt about death: ‘Everybody has to do it,’ but I always believed an exception would be made in my case."

- Martha Beck

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

- Keith Richards

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

- Hasidic saying

"but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one’s dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps."

- W.B. Yeats

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

- Elizabeth Lesser

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

- Mary Sarton

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

- John Lennon

"There is also this pressure in Hollywood to be ageless. I think what I have been witness to is seeing women trying to stay ageless with what they are doing to themselves. I am grateful to learn from their mistakes, because I am not injecting shit into my face. I see them and my heart breaks. I think, ‘Oh, God, if you only knew how much older you look.’ They’re trying to stop the clock, and all you can see is an insecure person who won’t let themselves just age."

- Jennifer Aniston

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

- Marty Buccella

"I like the woman you became better than the girl you were. I like the story you’ve written on your face"

- Joanna Bourne

"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

"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

"He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition, you and age are equally a burden."

- Plato

"Your face is marked with lines of life, put there by love and laughter, suffering and tears. It's beautiful."

- Lynsay Sands

"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all things that make you want to live to be a hundred."

- Woody Allen

"Something pretty… that’s just the surface. People worry so much about aging, but you look younger if you don’t worry about it."

- Jeanne Moreau

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

- Ogden Nash

"Age is a very high price to pay for maturity."

- Tom Stoppard

"It's sad to grow old, but nice to ripen."

- Brigitte Bardot

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

- Richard Leider

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

- Leon Trotsky

"Aging gracefully is about no heavy makeup, and not too much powder because it gets into the wrinkles, and, you know, to not get turtle eyelids and to not try to look young."

- Iris Apfel

"The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mole,but true beauty in a Woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she knows."

- Audrey Hepburn

"I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

- Ronald Reagan

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

- Rita Rudner

"The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you’ll grow out of it."

- Doris Day

"Those who think they have no time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness."

- Edward Stanley

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

- Billie Burke

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

- Luis Buñuel

"Some guy said to me: ‘Don’t you think you’re too old to sing rock n roll?’ I said: ‘You’d better check with Mick Jagger.'”"

- Cher

"Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine."

- Joan Collins

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

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows!"

- Audrey Hepburn

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

- Bob Hope

"There is nothing more aging than misery."

- Michelle Pfeiffer

"One should never be the oldest thing in one's house."

- Patsy Stone

"The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected."

- Robert Frost

"Youth is the best time to be rich, and the best time to be poor."

- Euripides

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

- Mickey Mantle

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

- Abraham Lincoln

"Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional."

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

"Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes."

"I'm not getting older, I'm becoming a classic."

- Unknown

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