~Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage, 1878 The nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug of custom gradually squeezing the life out of man's soul, had not yet begun for these happy-star'd young Belgians. Heaven kindly leaves some bird of hope to sing. Still in the realm of faded youth and joy, Thy faith grow cold, thy golden dreams take wing O murmuring heart! thy pleasures may decay, ~Henry Stanley Haskins, "De Senectute," Meditations in Wall Street, 1940 The blessed memories of old age are as likely to be middle-aged as youthful. ~Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), letter, c.1366–1367, translated by Morris Bishop, 1966 I read my years in my mirror, others read them on my brow. ~Max Nordau (1849–1923), "The Art of Growing Old," How Women Love and Other Tales (Soul Analysis), translated from the German by an unnamed translator, 1896 To remain always young, we need only do at every age what harmonises with it. If you would keep young: be cheerful, keep working, and love one another. ~Author unknown, quoted by Larry Wolters, 1969 The three ages of man: school tablet, aspirin tablet, and stone tablet. Colton, Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those Who Think, 1820 (no. LXXVI) The excesses of our youth, are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date. The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. ~Victor Cherbuliez, Samuel Brohl and Partner, 1877, translated from French (translator unspecified) My son, we ought to lay up a stock of absurd enthusiasms in our youth, or else we shall reach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we lose a great many on our way. ~Henry James Slack (1818–1896), The Ministry of the Beautiful, "Conversation IV: Spring-time on the Western Coast," 1850 The soul should have its own cycles and revolutions, presenting in turn every portion of its existence to the vivifying influence of the great source of light. Spiritual age is determined by the acts which make the mornings and evenings of the soul, and not by the motions of the physical globe. How stunning are the changes which age makes in a man while he sleeps! ~Mark Twain, letter to William Dean Howells, 1887 August 22nd ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1822, quoted in Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author by Edward John Trelawny, 1878 The mind of man, his brain, and nerves, are a truer index of his age than the calendar. Those who call it so have found all stages of life unwelcome, thanks to their mishandling of life, not to a particular age. S EE A LSO: AGES 0–29, AGES 30–39, AGES 40–49, AGES 50–59, AGES 60–69, AGES 70+, BIRTHDAY, CHILDHOOD, CHILDREN, GENERATIONS, HEALTH, INNER CHILD, MEDICAL, MEMORY, MENOPAUSE, NOSTALGIA, RETIREMENT, WISDOM –ღTerriĪge, toward which you draw amid the storms of life, is nothing so dreadful. Please enjoy the quotes, and I'll keep adding them as I tick-tock the years away reading (at arms' length) old books! Even though I've been collecting these since I was thirteen, this page has grown quite a bit since my late thirties and early forties, when the subject suddenly became a lot more personal to me. Welcome to my page of quotations about age, aging, and youth.
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