Aging Quotes

I go to Gascony, but my words stay here in your memory, and long after Etienne Gerard is forgotten a heart may be warmed or a spirit braced by some faint echo of the words that he has spoken. Gentlemen, an old soldier salutes you and bids you farewell. ~ The Adventures of Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. It's only the middle-aged who are really conscious of their limitations--that is why one should be so patient with them." ~ Reginald by Saki When one grew old, the whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom, and for what reason?--just to keep the breath in him a little longer. He did not want it at such cost. ~ The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through the river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced the saddest experience of all--forgetfulness of what it was like to be in love. ~ The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy As he had often forcibly argued, all experience tended to show that a man must die; and whether he died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he benefited the British Empire. ~ The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy "As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again." ~ Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens Dame Ermyntrude Loring, wife, and mother of warriors, was herself a formidable figure. Tall and gaunt, with hard craggy features and intolerant dark eyes, even her snow-white hair and stooping back could not entirely remove the sense of fear which she inspired in those around her. Her thoughts and memories went back to harsher times, and she looked upon the England around her as a degenerate and effeminate land which had fallen away for the old standard of knightly courtesy and valor. ~ Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle At last, however, his conversation became unbearable--a foul young man is odious, but a foul old one is surely the most sickening thing on earth. One feels that the white upon the hair, like that upon the mountain, should signify a height attained. ~ The Stark Munro Letters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot." ~ The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night, 'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?" ~ A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens