I got these quotes from a book that my Mother-in-law had at her house, Old Age is Always 15 Years Older Than I am. It’s a great bathroom book. Here are several of my favorites:
“The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you are learning you’re not old.” - Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, U.S. medical physicist
“If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.” -James A. Garfield, U.S. president
“The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.” -Muhammad Ali, U.S. heavyweight boxer
“When I was forty, my doctor advised me that a man in his forties shouldn’t play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached fifty to start again.”
-Hugo Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
“Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.” -Douglas MacArthur, U.S. Army General
“Old age is the only disease you don’t look forward to being cured of.” -From the movie Citizen Kane, 1941
“Be forever a student. He and he alone is an old man who feels that he has learnt enough and has no need for more knowledge.” -Sivananda, Indian physician and sage
“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” -George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher and poet
“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.” -Joan Baez, U.S. singer
“If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.” -Larry McMurtry, U.S. novelist
“Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.” -Will Rogers, U.S. humorist
“There are five essentials for a happy old age, and I enjoy them all: good health, sufficient money, friendship (including family), congenial surroundings, and continued activity. I put the last first.” - Nigel Nicolson, English writer
“I won’t be old till my feet hurt, and they only hurt when I don’t let ‘em dance enough, so I’ll keep right on dancing.” -Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, U.S. dancer
“I know a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty than they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.” -Robert Bly, U.S. poet
“Many people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy-five.” -Benjamin Franklin, U.S. statesman, inventor, and writer
“I just don’t think of age and time in respect of years. I just have too much experience of people in their seventies who are vigorous and useful and people who are thirty-five that are in lousy physical shape and can’t think straight. I don’t think age has that much to do with it.” -Harrison Ford, U.S. actor
“I have long thought that the aging process could be slowed down if it had to work its way through Congress.”
-George H. W. Bush, U.S. president
“The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn.” -Henry S. Haskins
“If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.” -Gelett Burgess, U.S. writer, poet, humorist and illustrator
“To yackety-yak about the past is for me time lost. Every morning I wake up saying, ‘I’m alive – a miracle.’ And so I keep on pushing.” -Jacques Cousteau, French explorer