Quotes about age
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“To age truly was to suffer the ultimate treason, that of one’s body against oneself.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

“Tell me, is he always really rude, or does he save that for mundanes?"
"Oh, he's rude to everyone," said Isabelle airily. "It's what makes him so damn sexy. That and he's killed more demons than anyone else his age.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“People don't get to our ages without having pasts. I'm more interested in the future.”

Robyn Donald (1940) New Zealand writer

Source: Tiger, Tiger

People, Past, Future

“Why were you so old when we met? I answered with the truth: Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Truth, Feeling

“Boys are perhaps beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of eighteen months and ninety years.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Darlings at the Top of the Stairs", Lanterns & Lances (1961); previously appeared in The Queen and in Harper's Magazine.
From Lanterns and Lances‎

Boy, Understanding

“Look and you wlll see, that which was can never be. When they seek a boy your age, Run, you flippin moron, run!”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Boy

“A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Dreams, Past

“A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: La volgarità in letteratura

Chance

“… and motioned me toward a spot next to a middle-aged Moroi in a very formal and very designer black suit. The suit screamed, I'm sorry the queen is dead, and I'm going to look fashionable while showing my grief”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Fashion, Dead

“For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.”

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

Life, Men, Books, Past

“In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

People, Sleep

“No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Heart

“We're taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don't have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool let's somebody tell them who the enemy is.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: In Her Own Words, p. 152
Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Fools, Communication, Idea

“What kills a person at twenty-five? Leukemia. An accident. But George knows the better odds are that someone who passes at that age dies of unhappiness. Drug overdose. Suicide. Reckless behavior.”

Scott Turow book Limitations

Source: Limitations

Behavior, Suicide, Personality

“Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Hope

“Relish love in your old age! Aged love is like aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating!”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, Wine

“There [is] no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

“It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.”

Michael Crichton Timeline

Source: Timeline

People

“And the greatest tragedy of our age is we don't listen to our consciences. We don't say what we think. We feel one thing and do another.”

Vasily Grossman book Life and Fate

Source: Life and Fate

Feeling, Thinking

“She decided she'd rather die in some less memorable way- maybe falling down the stairs, or going peacefully in her sleep at the age eighty, after a nice quiet life with Percy. Yes, that sounded good.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Life, Way, Sleep

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

1910s
Source: "The Road Not Taken", st. 4 (1916)

Travel

“Our age has need of violence," he writes. And he is violence.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

“I think that, with age, people come to realize that death is inevitable. And we need to learn to face it with serenity, wisdom and resignation. Death often frees us from a lot of senseless sufferings.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Death, Wisdom, People, Thinking

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Cooking

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=92" (1952) <br class="br">Source: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Light, Rage, Night

“Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Children, People

“Age is always advancing and I'm fairly sure it's up to no good.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

“Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

Source: Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself

“Those who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before the age of 40. More often, they do not strike their real pace until they are well beyond the age of 50.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Way

“Nothing is ever lost nor can be lost; the body aged, sluggish, cold…. the embers left from earlier fires shall dully flame again”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

“I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.”

Walker Percy (1916–1990) Southern philosophical novelist

Way

“Your heart can break at any age.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Heart

“Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

People, Memory

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

Remarks at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, November 1, 1977, Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287.

Life, Children

“How young can you die of old age?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

History, Change

“I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Lonesome Gods

People, Thinking

“I will compensate all your one-inch, two-inch losses because I know how important every inch is to you aged, decrepit men.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Ever After

Men, Loss

“It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to name just a few. Forget the scythe, Goddamn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a vacation.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Forgetting

“We live in an age of confusion and thirst in which the advantages of communication are greater than those of secrecy.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

Source: Esoterism as Principle and as Way

Communication

“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

“Tracy, the leader of the CDH group, looks at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

Wisdom, Way, Time

“Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading letters finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

Books, Search, Reading

“Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

"Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," lines 1-4, from Wine from These Grapes (1934)

Birth, Childhood

“What is an adult? A child blown up by age.”

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

A Woman Destroyed [Une femme rompue] (1967)
General sources

“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”

James Joyce book The Dead

Dubliners (1914)
Variant: One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
Source: "The Dead"

World, Passion

“Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Time, New Year

“We couldn't understand because we were too far… and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign… and no memories.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Travel, Understanding, Memory, Night

“Old age means realizing you will never own all the dogs you wanted to.”

Joe Gores (1931–2011) American writer

Dogs

“Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“The saddest thing was actually getting fed up with one another. It's like growing up in a family. When you get to a certain age, you want to go off and get your own girl and your own car, split up a bit.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Family, Cars, Girl

“Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Women

“I'd learned myself by the age of sixteen that just as girls guarded their virginity, boys guarded something less tangible which they called Themselves.”

Joyce Johnson (1935) American novelist, short story writer, memoirist

Source: Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir

Girl, Boy, Learning

“In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Source: Places I Never Meant To Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers

Books, Fear, Silence, Teachers

“Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart

People

“I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

Source: Early Writing

“We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“He looked like those paintings of baby angels - what do you call them, hubbubs? No cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Angels, Baby, Painting

“We were still at the age when girls are years older than guy, and the guys grow up by doing their best when the girls need them to.”

Tana French book Faithful Place

Source: Faithful Place

Guy, Girl

“Well isn’t that one thing you’re all the more wise for? Age has taught
you something. It seems to me that you know the big secret. That nobody
knows what’s going on”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Secret

“But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn't for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Feeling, Thinking, Sense

“It was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, Life, Death, Idea

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Birthday, For Wife

“Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Life, Disease, Way, Thinking

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

World, Heart

“As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Quoted in The Observer (7 February 1982)
1980s

Perfection

“It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.”

Caleb Carr (1955) Novelist, screenwriter, military historian

Truth, Knowledge

“I guess I should have forgotten about it ages ago, but forgetting isn't something I'm very good at.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Forgetting

“School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.”

Ivan Illich book Deschooling Society

Source: Deschooling Society

World, School, Religion

“Childhood and adulthood were not factors of age but states of mind.”

Alex Shakar The Savage Girl

Source: The Savage Girl

Childhood, Adulthood

“How old do you have to get before wisdom descends like a plastic bag over your head and you learn to keep your big mouth shut? Maybe never. Maybe you get more frivolous with age.”

Margaret Atwood book The Robber Bride

Source: The Robber Bride

Wisdom, Learning

“There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Youth, Hell, Perfection

“One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Source: Flipped

Life, Hate

“It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

Truth

“Using a fetching face to make men do as you wish is no different from a man using muscle to force a woman to his will. Both are base, and both will fail a person as they age.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Men, Personality

“What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?”

Jonathan Lethem book The Fortress of Solitude

Source: The Fortress of Solitude

Boy, Learning

“At that age you think boys have as much personality as coat hangers and, you don't notice their looks.
Then you grow up.”

John Marsden book Tomorrow, When the War Began

Source: Tomorrow, When the War Began

Boy, Thinking, Personality

“Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head and silently spreads cancer throughout your spouse.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Life

“Aren’t you a little old for your mom to be picking out your clothes for you? Really? Shopping at the Children’s Place at your age? I’m sure there’s some third-grader dying to know who bought the last navy I-sore shirt. (Nekoda)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Children, Moms, Clothes

“The whole "weak in the knees" thing, which she always thought was just some idiotic expression back from the golden age of idiotic expressions, was real.
-Suite Scarlett”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: Suite Scarlett

“When I turned two I was really anxious, because I'd doubled my age in a year.
I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I'm six I'll be ninety.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Time

“Age is not important unless you're a cheese.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Birthday

“It's just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it's time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Women, World, Learning, Time

“For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Life, Men, Books, Past

“Age is artificial. It's soulless. It doesn't matter one bit.”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

Source: Bleed

“We all have souls of different ages”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Soul

“Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Twentieth Century Faith : Hope and Survival (1972), p. 61
1970s

Children, People, Religion, Sex

“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

A speech delivered at Niblo’s Saloon, in New York, on the 15 of March, 1837.<br>The Works of Daniel Webster, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851, vol. 1, p. 358 http://books.google.com/books?id=9DMOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA358&lpg=PA358&dq=%22They+mean+to+govern+well%3B+but+they+mean+to+govern%22&source=bl&ots=oJ6IWDhF2B&sig=iYuDQMQjnHzxMjzbd6rJohrXVrQ&hl=en&ei=xqYqTKDpFML-nAeF2omjAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCwQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=%22They%20mean%20to%20govern%20well%3B%20but%20they%20mean%20to%20govern%22&f=false. <br class="br">Context: There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters.

Men

“You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.”

Cheryl Strayed book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Source: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Wisdom, Forgiveness

“Catholic, which I was until I reached the age of reason”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“Then spoke the thunder
DA Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Variant: The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Source: The Waste Land (1922)

Heart