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. . . see "AGE" for related links Eddie awoke in a teacup. It was a part of some old amusement park ride . . . . His instinct was to reach for his cane. He had kept it by his bed the last few years, because there were mornings when he no longer had the strength to get up without it. . . . The teacup he had awoken in was part of a primitive attraction called Spin-O-Rama. . . . This was the Ruby Pier of his childhood, some 75 years ago, only everything was new, freshly scrubbed. . . . He grabbed at his arms and legs. Aside from his lack of voice, he felt incredible. He walked in a circle. He jumped. No pain. In the last ten years, he had forgotten what it was like to walk without wincing or to sit without struggling to find comfort for his lower back. . . . Then he ran. Ha-ha! Eddie had not truly run in more than 60 years, not since the war, but he was running now, starting with a few gingerly steps, then accelerating into a full gait, faster, faster, like the running boy of his youth. . . . He ran down the heart of the old midway, where the weight guessers, fortune-tellers, and dancing gypsies had once worked. He lowered his chin and held his arms out like a glider, and every few steps he would jump, the way children do, hoping running will turn to flying. It might have seemed ridiculous to anyone watching, this white-haired maintenance worker, all alone, making like an airplane. But the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets. --Mitch Albom (1958 ) American sportswriter, novelist and newspaper columnist. _The Five People You Meet in Heaven_ [2003], "The Arrival" - To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverentthat is to triumph over old age. --Thomas Bailey Aldrich (18361907) American poet, short-story writer, and editor. _Ponkapog Papers_ [1903], "Leaves from a Notebook" To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. --Henri Frιdιrick Amiel (18211881) Swiss critic, _Journal Intime_ [1883] Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. "Apothegms" - "Let Me Grow Lovely" by Karle Wilson Baker (18781960) American poet. Let me grow lovely, growing old-- So many fine things do; Laces, and ivory, and gold, And silks need not be new; And there is healing in old trees, Old streets a glamour hold; Why may not I, as well as these, Grow lovely, growing old? - The biggest myth is that as you grow older, you gradually lose your interest in sex. This myth probably got started because younger people seem to want to have sex with each other at every available opportunity including traffic lights, whereas older people are more likely to reserve their sexual activities for special occasions such as the installation of a new pope. --Dave Barry (1947 ) American humorist. A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. --John Barrymore (John Sidney Blythe) (18821942) Shakespearean actor. In Gene Fowler _Good Night, Sweet Prince_ [1943]. To me old age is always fifteen years older than I am. --Bernard Baruch (18701965) American financier. I saw my wrinkles in their [friends] wrinkles. You know, one looks at herself in the mirror every morning, and she doesn't see the difference, she doesn't realize that she is aging. But then she finds a friend who was young with her, and the friend isn't young anymore, and all of a sudden, like a slap on her eyes, she remembers that she, too, isn't young anymore. --Ingrid Bergman (19151982) Swedish actress. In Oriana Fallaci's _The Egotists_ [1963], "Ingrid Bergman." The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old. --Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (18181885) American humorist. Tears fell from my eyesyes, weak and foolish as it now appears to me, I wept for my departed youth; and for that beauty of which the faithful mirror too plainly assured me, no remnant existed. --Marguerite Blessington (17891849) Irish novelist and poet. _The Confessions of an Elderly Lady_ [1838] Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked. --Pearl S. Buck (18921973) American author noted for her novels of life in China; winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature. _China, Past and Present_ [1972], Chapter 6 Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese. --Billie Burke (Mary William Appleton Burke) (18851970) American actress. - People ask me what I'd most appreciate getting for my 87th birthday. I tell them a paternity suit. --George Burns [Nathan Birnbaum] (18961996) American comedian. You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you're down there. --George Burns [Nathan Birnbaum] (18961996) American comedian. - We all know the troubles of old age. The bones creak; the eyes get dim, one forgets names.. The spark does not ignite; adrenalin has lost its potency. But there is something to be said on the other side... The beauty of nature has lost none of its charm; the beauty of women none of its benediction. There is a possibility of growing old gracefully, and with content in one's heart. --Vannevar Bush (18901974) [1971 letter] American electrical engineer and administrator who oversaw government mobilization of scientific research during World War II. [1971 letter.] - "Changed" by Charles Stuart Calverley (18311884) English poet. I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low; 'Tis that I can't remember how They go. I could not range the hills till high Above me stood the summer moon: And as to dancing, I could fly As soon. The sports, to which with boyish glee I sprang erewhile, attract no more; Although I am but sixty-three Or four. Nay, worse than that, I've seem'd of late To shrink from happy boyhoodboys Have grown so noisy, and I hate A noise. They fright me, when the beech is green, By swarming up its stem for eggs: They drive their horrid hoops between My legs: It's idle to repine, I know; I'll tell you what I'll do instead: I'll drink my arrowroot, and go To bed. - To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion. --Albert Camus (19131960) French novelist, dramatist, and essayist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less that 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. "How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five. That's the key. You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16. And then the greatest day of your life...you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony...YOU BECOME 21...Yesssss!!! But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED, we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed? You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50...and your dreams are gone. But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would! So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60. You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by- day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80's and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90's you start going backwards; "I was JUST 92." Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!" --George Carlin (1937 ) American stand-up comedian and author. We are but older children, dear Who fret to find our bedtime near. --Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898) English writer and logician. _Through the Looking-Glass_, A Preface (1871) Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty. --Coco Chanel (18831971) French fashion designer. The recipe for a long, happy life: consult with old philosophers and young doctors, consort with old friends and young women. --Arthur C. Clarke (1917 ) English science-fiction writer. _The Trigger_ [1999], p. 38 - As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they sooner or later face an increasingly nagging question: "Is this all there is?" Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing, but for most people, behind it all there is the expectation that after one grows up, things will get better. During the years of early adulthood the future still looks promising, the hope remains that one's goals will be realized. But inevitably the bathroom mirror shows the first white hairs, and confirms the fact that those extra pounds are not about to leave; inevitably eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains begin to shoot through the body. Like waiters in a restaurant starting to place breakfast settings on the surrounding tables while one is still having dinner, these intimations of mortality plainly communicate the message: Your time is up, it's time to move on. When this happens, few people are ready. "Wait a minute, this can't be happening to me. I haven't even begun to live. Where's all that money I was supposed to have made? Where are all the good times I was going to have?" --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934 ) Psychology professor at the University of Chicago. _Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience_ [1990],"Happiness Revisited" - Last week I told my wife, 'A man is like wine, he gets better with age.' She locked me in the cellar. --Rodney Dangerfield [Jacob Cohen] (19212004) American comedian. Let's face it, I'm getting old. That's bad enough, but in the last few years, I've had four major operations. I've been cut up so many times, I fell like I'm back in my old neighborhood. --Rodney Dangerfield [Jacob Cohen] (19212004) American comedian. _It's Not Easy Bein' Me_ [2004] - At twenty, a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he's seventy, he still wants to reform the world, but he knows he can't. --Clarence Darrow (18571938) American lawyer. My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is. --Ellen DeGeneres (1958 ) American TV and film actress. I am forty now, and forty years is a lifetime; it is extremely old age. To go on living after forty is unseemly, disgusting, immoral! Who goes on living after forty? give me a sincere and honest answer! I'll tell you - fools and rogues. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky (18211881), Russian novelist, journalist, and short story writer. _Notes from the Underground_ [1864] It may be, old age is gentle and fair. . . Still I tremble at a gray hair. --Dorothy Dow (1899??) American poet. "Unbeliever" [1942] _Time and Love_ I feel so sorry for folks who don't like to grow old. I revel in my years. They enrich me. If God should say to me, `I will let you begin over again and you may have your youth back once more,' I should say, `If You do not mind, I prefer to go on growing old.' I would not exchange the peace of mind, the abiding rest of soul, the measure of wisdom I have gained from the sweet and bitter and perplexing experiences of life. These are the best years of my lifethe sweetest, and the most free from anxious care. The way grows brighter, the birds sing sweeter, the winds blow softer, the sun shines more radiantly than ever before....My `outward man' is perishing, but my `inward man' is being joyously renewed day by day. --Henry Durbanville Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so. --Tryon Edwards (18091894) American theologian. The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. --T.S. Eliot (18881965) Anglo-American poet, critic, and dramatist. Oh! To be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to *believe*. --Fanny Fern [Sarah Willis] (18111872) American newspaper columnist. _Ginger-Snaps_ [1870] The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and staunch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands; Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there. --Eugene Field (18501895) American journalist and writer of children's verse. "Little Boy Blue," st. 1 The same old charitable lie, Repeated as the years scoot by; Perpetually makes a hit-- "You really haven't changed a bit!" --Margaret Fishback, _The Lie of the Land_ Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. --Henry Ford (18631947) American car manufacturer. A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age. --Robert Frost (18741963) American poet. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. --Mohandas K. Gandhii (18691948) Indian statesman and leader of the nationalistic movement against British rule. You know you're growing old when almost everything hurts, and what doesn't hurt doesn't work. --Hy Gardner (19081989) American journalist. If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old. --James A. Garfield (18311881) 20th President of the United States [1881]. ^^ Gyles Brandreth once invited Sir John Gielgud for a meal at the House of Commons on his 90th birthday. The guest list included Glenda Jackson. When Brandreth gushed how honoured he was that Sir John had agreed to spend his 90th birthday with them, Gielgud replied: "Oh, no. I'm delighted. All my real friends are dead." ^^ - Enjoy what you can; endure what you must. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent. I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. Once a man's thirty, he's already old, He is indeed as good as dead. It's best to kill him right away. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. _Faust_ The Second Part, act II, "The Gothic Chamber" - I'm forty-nine but I could be twenty-five except for my face and legs. --Nadine Gordimer (1923 ) South African novelist and winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. _Not for Publication and Other Stories_ The secret of what life's all about Was answered by the sages: Life's about one day at a time No matter what your age is. --Robert Half It is really about time that age was accepted as part of life too. We are afraid of growing old. And many of us spend more than half our waking hours trying to camouflage our age. There is nothing more beautiful than an unadorned old face with the lines that tell a story, a story of a life that has been lived with some fullness. --Helen Hayes (19001993) One of the most popular American stage actresses of the 20th century. - A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894) American physician, poet, and essayist. Most persons have died before they expiredied to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894) American physician, poet, and essayist. _The Professor at the Breakfast Table_ [1860] A man over ninety is a great comfort to all his elderly neighbours: he is a picket-guard at the extreme outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy must get by him before he can come near their camp. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894) American physician, poet, and essayist. _The Guardian Angel_ [1867] - - The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to oneself: 'The work is done.' But just as one says that, the answer comes: 'The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains.' The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be, while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. [1931], on his ninetieth birthday. Oh to be seventy again. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. (Upon seeing an attractive woman.) - Just tonight I stood before the tavern, Nothing seemed the way it used to be; In the glass I saw a strange reflection, Was that lonely woman really me? --Mary Hopkins (1950 ) _Those Were The Days_ [1968] (song) (Music and lyrics by Gene Raskin) After a man is 50, you can fool him by saying he is smart, but you can't fool him by saying he's pretty. --E.W. House Any time I think I feel myself growing old I tell myself, "Self, I haven't got time for that today. I'll think about it tomorrow." --Norma Hunkele (AFPF Usenet newsgroup) - Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old. --Washington Irving (17831859) American writer. _Bracebridge Hall_ [1822], "Bachelors" That happy age when a man can be idle with impunity. --Washington Irving (17831859) American writer. _The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent_ [1819-1820] "Rip Van Winkle" - When I no longer thrill to the first snow of the season, I'll know I'm growing old. --Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson (19122007) First Lady of the U.S. [19631969]. Let us, my dear, pray for one another, and consider our sufferings as notices mercifully given us to prepare ourselves for another state. I live now in a melancholy way. My old friend Mr. Levet is dead, who lived with me in the house, and was useful and companionable; Mrs. Desmoulins is gone away; and Mrs. Williams is so much decayed , that she can add little to another's gratifications. The world passes away, and we are passing with it; but there is, doubtless, another world, which will endure for ever. Let us fit ourselves for it. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Letter to Lucy Porter. You've heard of the three ages of man: youth, middle age, and "you're looking wonderful!" --Francis Joseph - "Warning" by Jenny Joseph (1932 ) British poet. When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And sat in sandals, and say we've no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick along the public railings And make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain And pick the flowers in other people's gardens And learn to spit. You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat And eat three pounds of sausages at a go Or only bread and pickle for a week And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes. But now we must have clothes that keep us dry And pay our rent and not swear in the street And set a good example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and read the papers. But maybe I ought to practice a little now? so people who know me are not too shocked and surprised When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple. - Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. --Franz Kafka (18831924) Czech novelist. Inside every seventy-year old is a thirty-five year old asking, "What happened?" --Ann Landers [Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer] (19182002) Advice columnist. The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. --Doug Larson When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now. Will you still be sending me a valentine, Birthday greetings, bottle of wine? If I'd be out till quarter to three, would you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still feed me? When I'm sixty-four? --John Lennon (19401980) and Paul McCartney (1942 ) English pop singers and songwriters "When I'm Sixty-Four" [1967 song] Autumn is really the best of the seasons; and I'm not sure that old age isn't the best part of life. But of course, like autumn, it doesn't last. --C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (18981963) British scholar and novelist. _Letters of C.S. Lewis_ [1966], "27 October 1963" It is autumn; not without But within me is the cold. Youth and spring are all about; It is I that have grown old. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. "Autumn Within" There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age. --Sophia Loren (1934 ) Italian actress. end page | GAMBLING - GARDENS | GARFIELD - GENERATION GAP | GENEROSITY -GENTLEMEN | GEOGRAPHY - GERSHWIN | GHOSTS - GLASSES | GLOBALIZATION - GOALS | GOD & GOING HOME | GOLF | GOOD DEEDS - GOODBYES | GOODNESS - GOVERNMENT | GRACE - GRATITUDE | GRAVEYARDS - GROWING | GROWING OLDER - PAGE 1 (A-L) | GROWING OLDER - PAGE 2 (M-Z) | GROWING UP - GULLIBLE | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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