“Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.”
Growing older changes how we see everything — time, love, ambition, regret. These quotes capture the full arc of aging, from the stubborn optimism of youth to the hard-earned clarity that only comes with years behind you. Whether you are twenty and curious or eighty and reflective, there is something here that will land.
“I don't believe in happy endings, but I do believe in happy travels, because ultimately, you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It's a mean thing, life.”
“Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.”
“If youth knew if age could.”
“My sister and I shared a bedroom our entire lives and I believe she discovered the Beatles when she was about 11 and I'm four years younger. So from the age of 7 until 17 we had nothing but Beatles paraphernalia in our room, even those little stuffed Beatles that went on stands that are dressed as the Sgt. Pepper band.”
“Maybe I'll be a feminist in my old age.”
“From age 16, I lived and breathed wine. I read every magazine and book about wine.”
“The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.”
“Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.”
“Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.”
“Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.”
“The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.”
“I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.”
“Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.”
“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.”
“How young can you die of old age?”
“Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.”