Old Age and Ageing

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

Oh roses for the flush of youth, And laurel for the perfect prime; But pluck an ivy branch for me Grown old before my time.

Difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti Se puero, castigator censorque minorum.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

Thou hast nor youth nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant.

For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

After sixty years the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal about it.

Envy not the old man the tranquillity of his existence, nor yet blame him if it sometimes looks like apathy. Time, the inexorable, does not threaten him with the scythe so often as with the sand-bag. He does not cut, but he stuns and stupefies.

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume.

Once a man’s thirty, he’s already old, He is indeed as good as dead. It’s best to kill him right away.

How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick?

The wiser mind mourns less for what Age takes away, than what it leaves behind.

Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.

Harvest, oh! harvest your hour While life is abloom with youth! For age with bitter ruth Will fade your beauty’s flower. 4

An old man’s eagle mind.

I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.

The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.

 

Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.

I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.