“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

“Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

“It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

“In old age… we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.”

Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) Norwegian novelist and Nobel Prize recipient

“Undoubtedly, as it seems to me at least, satiety of all pursuits causes satiety of life. Boyhood has certain pursuits: does youth yearn for them? Early youth has its pursuits: does the matured or so-called middle stage of life need them? Maturity, too, has such as are not even sought in old age, and finally, there are those suitable to old age. Therefore as the pleasures and pursuits of the earlier periods of life fall away, so also do those of old age; and when that happens man has his fill of life and the time is ripe for him to go.”
Omnino, ut mihi quidem videtur studiorum omnium satietas vitae facit satietatem. Sunt pueritiae studia certa: num igitur ea desiderant adulescentes? Sunt ineuntis adulescentiae: num ea constans iam requirit aetas, quae media dicitur? Sunt etiam eius aetatis: ne ea quidem quaeruntur in senectute. Sunt extrema quaedam studia senectutis: ergo, ut superiorum aetatum studia occidunt, sic occidunt etiam senectutis; quod cum evenit, satietas vitae tempus maturum mortis affert.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

“Old people at the supermarket make you wonder about all those middle-aged people you see jogging the streets to preserve their vascular systems for another fifty years.
And about all the people of all ages all over the country who are eating less, drinking less, smoking less, driving safer and in general looking for a death-proof safety suit to get them over the peak years and down into the valley of old age fit to enjoy the fruits of their abstention and labor.
Will anybody care when they get there?
Will they be able to afford an orange?”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

“Man's death by sins is more than his death by fate and his life by charity is more than his life by age.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

“There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Uncle Silas