Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.

Abigail Van Buren (1918 - ), 1978

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.

Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976)

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.

Andre Maurois (1885 - 1967), The Art of Living

You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.

Anouk Aimee, O Magazine, October 2003

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication¹, because youth is sweet and they are growing.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), 'Nicomachean Ethics²'

At twenty years of age the will reigns³; at thirty the wit; at forty the judgement.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

By my rambling⁴ digressions I perceive myself to be growing old.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Bernard M. Baruch (1870 - 1965)

To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Bernard M. Baruch (1870 - 1965), 1940

Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

Betty Friedan (1921 - 2006)

There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you.

Carol Matthau, O Magazine, October 2003

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.

Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all.

Doris Lessing, O Magazine, October 2003

The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.

Doug Larson

I'm very pleased with each advancing year. It stems back to when I was forty. I was a bit upset about reaching that milestone⁵, but an older friend consoled me. 'Don't complain about growing old - many, many people do not have that privilege.'

Earl Warren (1891 - 1974), Chief Justice

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration⁶ if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty⁷ breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)

It is a sadness of growing older that we lose our ardent⁸ appreciation⁹ of what is new and different and difficult.

Elizabeth Aston, The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, 2005

With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 - 1902), O Magazine, October 2003

Though it sounds absurd, it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I felt at twenty.

Ellen Glasgow (1873 - 1945), The Woman Within, 1954

That is the greatest fallacy, the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961), A Farewell to Arms, 1929

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography¹⁰.

Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966)

I grow more intense as I age.

Florida Scott-Maxwell, O Magazine, October 2003

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1869 - 1959)

You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech.

Franklin P. Jones

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

Fred Astaire

It is kind of strange watching your personal history become costume.

gadgetgirl, gadgetgirl, 07-25-07

Age to me means nothing. I can't get old; I'm working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you're working, you stay young. When I'm in front of an audience, all that love and vitality¹¹ sweeps over me and I forget my age.

George Burns (1896 - 1996)