Quotes on Aging
“Somewhere deep inside, we all still long to chase butterflies, dance in flower beds and sing to the stars.”
– Robbi Mikkola
A grandmother’s special calling is to pray and to be a fellow worker in the battle in which her children or her grandchildren are engaged.”
– Elisabeth Elliott.
“It is the privilege of adults to give advice. It is the privilege of youth not to listen. Both avail themselves of their privileges, and the world rocks along.”
– D. Sutton (20th-century American Educator)
“A grandmother is a lady who has no children of her own, so she likes other people’s little girls. A grandfather is a man grandmother. He goes for walks with boys, and they talk about fishing and tractors and like that.”
– Patsy Gray (Age 9)
“The grandchildren were always delighted to see her. Why? They enjoyed her because she obviously enjoyed them.”
– Peregrine Churchill (Grandson of Jennie Churchill)
“The people whom the sons and daughters find it hardest to understand are the fathers and mothers, but young people can get on very well with the grandfathers and grandmothers.”
– Simeon Strunsky (American Writer B 1879-1948)
“If becoming a grandmother was only a matter of choice, I should advise every one of you straight away to become one. There is no fun for old people like it!”
– Hannah Whithall Smith (19th-century Philadelphia Quaker)
“Our grandchildren accept us for ourselves, without rebuke or effort to change us, as no one in our entire lives has ever done; not our parents, siblings, spouses, friend, and hardly ever our own grown children.”
– Ruth Goode (American Writer B 1905)
“A grandparent pretends he doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.”
– Erma Bombeck (American Humorist B 1927)
“We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Writer and Philosopher B 1803-1882)
“Grandparents don’t have to be smart, only answer questions like why dogs hate cats and how come God isn’t married.”
– Patsy Gray (Age 9)
“I remember my grandmother wrapping fifteen cents in the corner of an envelope, tying it with a rubber band, and throwing it down from the third floor so I could buy rainbow-colored ices in paper cup from the man in the white truck.”
– Dr. Dorothy Greenbaum (20th-century American Pediatrician)
“Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.”
– Pearl S. Buck (American Writer B 1892-1973)
“We all know grandparents whose values transcend passing fads and pressures, and who possess the wisdom of distilled pain and joy.”
– Jimmy Carter (American President B 1924)
“A grandparent will accept your calls from anywhere, collect.”
– Erma Bombeck (American Humorist B 1927)
“A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.”
– Erma Bombeck (American Humorist B 1927)
“A grandma is old on the outside and young on the inside.”
– John Wright (Age 7 1/2)
“I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an unhuman world without the aged.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet B 1772-1834)
“To our grandchildren, what we tell them about their parents’ childhood and our own young years is living history.”
– Ruth Goode (American Writer B b. 1905)
“A grandmother is a babysitter who watches the kids instead of the television.”
– Anonymous
“There is a compulsion that is perhaps the heart of life’s meanings, this marvelous mystery of blood ties that brings joy whenever a new family member comes on the scene.”
– Walter Cronkite (American Newscaster B b. 1916)
“The linking of the generations, the historical lineage of the family, the sharing of love – gives purpose to life.”
– Dr. George Landberg (American Psychiatrist B 1931)
“An old man, having retired from active life, regains the gaity and irresponsibility of childhood. He is ready to play, he cannot run with his son, but he can totter with his grandson. Our first and last steps have the same rhythm.”
– André Maurois (French Writer B 1885-1967)
“How old are your grandchildren? Well, the doctor’s two, and the lawyer’s four.”
– Anonymous
“What children are looking for is a hug, a lap, a kind word, a touch, someone to read them a story, somebody to smile and share with.”
– John Thompson (20th-century Day-Care Center Administrator)
“The advantage to being eighty years old is that one has had many people to love.”
– Jean Renoir (French Film Director B 1894-1979)
“It is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace. When a man’s mother holds his child in her gladden arms, he is ware of the roundness of life’s cycle; of the mystic harmony of life’s ways.”
– Christopher Morley (American Writer B 1890-1957)
“Anyone who has not known that inestimable privilege can possibly realize what good fortune it is to grow up in a home where there are grandparents.”
– Suzanne LaFollette
“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”
– Unknown
“Experts in aging make a distinction between passive aging and purposeful aging. Successful, purposeful aging calls for continued involvement, relationships, discipline, and an attitude of faith.”
– George Sweeting
“Giving is the secret to a healthy life. Not necessarily money, but whatever a person has to give of encouragement, sympathy, and understanding.”
– John D. Rockefeller
“If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.”
– J. Garfield
“It is possible to be happy without having perfect health . . . Thank goodness my happiness doesn’t come from my joints, but from my heart.”
– Beverley LaHaye
“Your manner of life now is already determining your life in those years of old age and retirement, without your realizing it even, and perhaps without your giving enough thought to it. One must therefore prepare oneself for retirement.”
– Paul Tournier
“The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration but its donation.”
– Corrie Ten Boom
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“Autumn is really the best of the seasons; and I’m not sure that old age isn’t the best part of life.”
– C.S. Lewis
“By the time you’re 80 years old, you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.”
– George Burns
“One of the good things about getting older is you find you’re more interesting than most of the people you meet.”
– Lee Marvin
“We don’t stop laughing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop laughing.”
– Anonymous
“A chuckle a day may not keep the doctor away,
but it sure does make those times in life’s waiting room a little more bearable.”
– Anne Wilson Schaef
“Laughter is like changing a baby’s diaper
it doesn’t permanently solve a thing, but it does make life more acceptable for a while.”
– Anonymous
“If I were given an opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.”
– Charles Schulz
“Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die. You need this medicine as much as I do.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“There is a time for everything — a time to weep and a time to laugh.”
– Ecclesiastes 3:1,4 (NIV)
An aging wife inquired of her husband, ‘Will you love me when I’m old, gray, and wrinkled?’
To which he answered, ‘I do.’
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
– Robert Brault
“Old age has its pleasures, which though different, are no less than the pleasures of youth.”
– W. Somerset Maugham
To suddenly retire with no plans for a meaningful use of time can be devastating. Retirement must be wisely planned.
Psalm 71 is called the psalm for seniors. The Psalmist voices some of the feelings that accompany aging, but also states his strong desire to be a light in the darkness:
“Since my youth you have taught me, and to his day I declare your marvelous deeds. Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come”
– Psalm 71:17-18
“I married an archeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.”
– Agatha Christie
“For age is opportunity no less than youth itself, tho’, in another dress. And as the evening twilight fades away, the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“If I can make people smile, then I have served my purpose for God.”
– Comedian Red Skeleton
“Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.”
– Norman Cousins
“Laughter is a form of internal jogging.”
– Norman Cousins
“It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads your hips.”
– Comedian Fred Allen
“It is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.”
– Martin Luther
“The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills, wills.”
– Richard Needham
“To me, old age is fifteen years older than I am.”
– Bernard Mannes Baruch
“Old age is when you know all the answers, but nobody asks you any questions.”
– Lawrence J. Peter
“When a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking younger, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.”
– Washington Irving
“Old age is just as important and meaningful a part of God’s perfect will as is youth. God is every bit as interested in the old as the young.”
– J.O. Sanders
“It is only logical that if God’s will is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2), then complaining about it or rebelling against it is out. If God’s will is acceptable, it must be accepted.”
– J.O. Sanders
“Old age is like everything else: To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”
– Fred Astaire
“It’s a mere moment in a man’s life between an All-Star game and an old-timer’s game.”
– Vin Scully
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”
– Mark Twain
“Competitiveness is a personality thing and competitive people don’t become pushovers the day they turn fifty.”
– Hale Irwin
“Almost all enduring success comes to people after they are forty. For seldom does mature judgment arrive before then.”
– Henry Ford.
“A man’s character never changes radically from youth to old age. What happens is that circumstances bring out characteristics which have not been obvious to the superficial observer.”
– Hesketh Pearson
“The three immutable facts: You own stuff. You will die. Someone will get that stuff.”
– Jane Bryant
“I do not know what the big deal is about old age.
Old people who shine from inside look ten to twenty years younger.”
– Dolly Parton
“Growing older is not upsetting; being perceived as old is.”
– Kenny Rogers
“If youth but knew; if age but could.”
– Henri Estienne II
“To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.”
– William Makepeace Thackeray
“If you take all the experience and judgment of men over fifty out of the world, there wouldn’t be enough left to run it.”
– Henry Ford
“Character contributes to beauty.It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.”
– Jacqueline Bisse
“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”
– Albert Einstein
“I’d like to be a bigger and more knowledgeable person ten years from now than I am today. I think that for all of us as we grow older, we must discipline ourselves to continue expanding, broadening, learning, keeping our minds active and open.”
–Clint Eastwood
“People do not retire. They are retired by others.”
– Duke Ellington
“You know, by the time you reach my age, you’ve made plenty of mistakes if you’ve lived your life properly.”
– Ronald Reagan
“If in the last few years you have not discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.”
– Gelett Burgess
“Wrinkles are hereditary. Parents get them from their children.”
– Doris Day
“Grandchildren are God’s compensation to us for growing old.”
– Anonymous
“Having grandchildren is the best of all possible worlds.
I don’t have any responsibility for them, I just do all the fun stuff.”
– Mary Beth
“No matter what you do, your grandmother thinks it’s wonderful.”
– Judith Levy (20th-century American Writer and Editor)
“To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness.”
– J.B. Priestley (English Writer B 1894-1984)
“Nothing makes a boy smarter than being a grandson.”
– Anonymous
“There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.”
– Victor Marie Hugo (French Writer B 1802-1885)
“Praise youth and it will prosper.”
– Irish Proverb
“Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will you shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it.”
– St. Francis de Sales
‘I am convinced that one of the most important items for longevity is the maintenance of a daily work schedule,’ he said a year later when honored as the nation’s oldest worker. ‘I have always taken to heart that profound statement of Voltaire: How infinitesimal is the importance of anything I can do, but how infinitely important it is that I do just that.’
– Dr. F. William Sunderman (died at the age of 104)
“I shall grow old, but never lose life’s zest,
because the road’s last turn will be the best.”
– Henry Van Dyke
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”
– Mark Twain
“Some of the world’s best educators are grandparents.”
– Charlie W. Shedd (American Minister B 1915)
“Just about the time a women thinks her work is done,
she becomes a grandmother.”
– Edward H. Dreschnack (20th-century American Writer)