Quotes about old age

“Advice,” chuckled Doña Vorchenza. “The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one’s mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you’re a nag. Give it at seventy and you’re a sage.”

By rights he was still outrunning his age, still ahead of most men nearing threescore years, but he knew deep in his heart that there would never be any way of running fast enough.

What do you mean, why? Is it not obvious? What is life but a betrayal? We start out young, full of hope. The sun is good; the world awaits us. But every passing year shows how small you are, how insignificant against the power of the seasons. Then you age. Your strength fails, and the world laughs at you through the jeers of younger men. And you die. Alone. Unfulfilled. But sometimes ... sometimes there will come a man who is not insignificant. He can change the world, rob the seasons of their power. He is the sun.

"You are getting too old for this." "A man is as old as he feels, woman!" "And how old do you feel?" "About ninety."

The Old were always given the highest respect.

Nothing makes a man feel older than a young woman.

We know the axes on which we should judge, and age has never been one.

To age truly was to suffer the ultimate treason, that of one’s body against oneself.

“When we are young,” Jasnah said, “we want simple answers. There is no greater indication of youth, perhaps, than the desire for everything to be as it should. As it has ever been.”

Shallan frowned, still watching the men by the tavern over her shoulder.

“The older we grow,” Jasnah said, “the more we question. We begin to ask why. And yet, we still want the answers to be simple. We assume that the people around us—adults, leaders—will have those answers. Whatever they give often satisfies us.”

“I was never satisfied,” Shallan said softly. “I wanted more.”

“You were mature,” Jasnah said. “What you describe happens to most of us, as we age. Indeed, it seems to me that aging, wisdom, and wondering are synonymous. The older we grow, the more likely we are to reject the simple answers. Unless someone gets in our way and demands they be accepted regardless.” Jasnah’s eyes narrowed. “You wonder why I reject the devotaries.”

“I do.”

“Most of them seek to stop the questions.”

I think people understand things different when they get older. It’s not a question of getting soft, or seeing things in the gray areas instead of black and white. I really believe I’m just understanding things different. Better.

Man, the period of whose life is one hundred years, should practise Dharma, Artha, and Kama at different times and in such a manner that they may harmonize, and not clash in any way. He should acquire learning in his childhood; in his youth and middle age he should attend to Artha and Kama, and in his old age he should perform Dharma, and thus seek to gain Moksha, that is, release from further transmigration.

You have many years to live—do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.