“Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.”
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.
“Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.”
“Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.”
“A man growing old becomes a child again.”
“I did successfully kick tobacco at the age of 34. I smoked for like 20 years, from 14 to 34.”
“Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.”
“Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.”
“Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.”
“The idea of regretting not doing this seemed insane to me. Sitting in the corner at a bar at age 60, saying: 'I could've been Bond. Buy me a drink.' That's the saddest place I could be. At least now at 60 I can say: 'I was Bond. Now buy me a drink.'”
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.”
“Why should 20-year-olds only be considered sexy? I think we get better with age.”
“Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.”
“I wanted to be a forest ranger or a coal man. At a very early age, I knew I didn't want to do what my dad did, which was work in an office.”
“What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.”
“It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.”
“I think love can happen at any age... it has no age.”