To be not young

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

~ Hervey Allen ~

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

~ Thomas Arnold ~

Old men should have more care to end life well than to live long.

~ Captain J. Brown ~

How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

~ John Burroughs ~

It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.

~ Emily Carr ~

Every time I think that I’m getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.

~ Lillian Carter ~

No one is so old as to think he cannot live one more year.

Marcus Cicero

I’m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I’ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.

~ Rodney Dangerfield ~

Middle age is youth without levity, and age without decay.

~ Daniel Defoe ~

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

~ Benjamin Franklin ~

You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.

~ John Greier ~

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

~Samuel Johnson~

A man ninety years old was asked to what he attributed his longevity. I reckon, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, it because most nights I went to bed and slept when I should have sat up and worried.

~ Dorothea Kent ~

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can’t quite name.

~ Philip Larkin ~

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

~ Doug Larson ~
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I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content.

~ Lin Yü-tang ~

Preparation for old age should begin not later than one’s teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.

~ Arthur E. Morgan ~