Popular quotes about Old! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 32
To a large extent, the aged in our society are ghettoized. Old people are seen as useless, bypassed by history, old-fashioned, in the way. So, not surprisingly, when we reach the official mark of old age, we're supposed to go gently into that good night, to get off center stage and hand over the spotlight. Old age is also surrounded by shame - the myth of impotence and inability.
Sam KeenNearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.
Herman Melville...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.
George MacDonaldWe are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children innocent of thier old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.
Milan KunderaBe forewarned,' the vamp said, 'if I learn that there's anything romantic happening here, I'm sending him packing...less a few body parts.' Kylie's mouth dropped open. 'Romantic? Oh, please, he's old. He's as old as you.' Burnett's brow creased. 'Which is my point.' His frown deepened. 'Not that I'm *that* old.
C.C. HunterThe Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
William Butler YeatsFor me, being Christian Armenian, born into the Islamic culture in Iran and then, at the age of 13, being sent to England and embracing the English culture and becoming part of so-called swinging London and the era of euphoria and celebration that the '60s represented is very critical. It was a moment when, for the first time, the business of internationalism was being effectively represented-in music, art, cinema, design. Before that, everything was directed toward the old industry, the old school, the old format, and there was no room for varieties to evolve.
Tony ShafraziOld politicians, like old actors, revive in the limelight. The vacancy which afflicts them in private momentarily lifts when, oncemore, they feel the eyes of an audience upon them. Their old passion for holding the centre of the stage guides their uncertain footsteps to where the footlights shine, and summons up a wintry smile when the curtain rises.
Malcolm MuggeridgeNow that the most interesting matter of identity is not what place someone was born in, but what point in time they are from - where they sit in relation to time. Age has become much more divisive than place. With the Internet and globalization, a twenty-year-old in New York has far more cultural references in common with a twenty-year-old in Nebraska than they do with a thirty-year-old who lives next door. National identity is what they trick you with when they want your feet in their army boots or your taxes in their bailouts.
Nick LairdI'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.
Octavia ButlerI'm really a sucker for old, old movies. Like old film noir. I don't know. I also really enjoy independent movies.
Boti BlissLife was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.
William FaulknerGive people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images
David OgilvyI love chess, and I didn't invent Fischerandom chess to destroy chess. I invented Fischerandom chess to keep chess going. Because I consider the old chess is dying, it really is dead. A lot of people have come up with other rules of chess-type games, with 10x8 boards, new pieces, and all kinds of things. I'm really not interested in that. I want to keep the old chess flavor. I want to keep the old chess game. But just making a change so the starting positions are mixed, so it's not degenerated down to memorisation and prearrangement like it is today.
Bobby FischerI tend to fly old airplanes and old sort of things that are nearly about as old as me. Biplanes and stuff like that.
David GilmourThere is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He many not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise - but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.
Betty SmithMore than anything, I wanted to make sure that everybody was a pusher of difference. And they had to be able to do it in a communicative way, not esoterically. Because there are a lot of people who push things forward but sometimes only you and two people out of 500 in the room get it, but you want somebody who has mastered their craft so well that an 8-year-old gets it just like an 80-year-old gets it. They get the same visceral feeling.
Pharrell WilliamsMemory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words.
Siri HustvedtVampires are so old that they don't need to impress anyone anymore. They're comfortable in their own skin. It's this enigmatic strength that's very romantic and old-fashioned. I think it goes back to something of a Victorian attitude of finding a strong man who's going to look after his woman.
Stephen MoyerWith the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
Jack LondonWhen we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.
Alexander PopeHogslop is the real deal groovilicious honkin old-time string band. Guaranteed old-time awesomeness with these fellas around!
Abigail WashburnBaseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That's why they say, we don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing.
Satchel PaigeI have compromised down the line. I've disliked it intensely in the old days when you were trying to talk race relations and they would not allow you to talk about the legitimacies of race relations. In the old days, you didn't talk about black, you talked about Eskimo or American Indian, and the American Indian was assumed not to be a problem area.
Rod SerlingFor as the body grows old, so the wits grow old and become blind towards all things alike.
HerodotusFrom Mount Hollywood, Los Angeles looks rather nice, enveloped in a haze of changing colors. Actually, and in spite of all the healthful sunshine and ocean breezes, it is a bad place - full of old, dying people, who were born old of tired pioneer parents, victims of America - full of curious wild and poisonous growths, decadent religious cults and fake science, and wildcat enterprises, which, with their aim for quick profit, are doomed to collapse and drag down multitudes of people.
Louis AdamicPop stars are capable of growing old. Mick Jagger at 50 will be marvelous - a battered old roue - I can just see him. An aging rock star doesn't have to opt out life. When I'm 50, I'll prove it.
David BowieI turn 30 next month, and in my 20s, I've been in this limbo of being too old to play the young lead, and too young to play the 30, 35 - year - old. I've always had an older head on my shoulders because I've hung out with older people. I was in television shows with older actors, and when I was 15, 16, 17, I sat up in hotel lobby bars with older actors until the early hours of the morning hearing them tell stories. I've always been drawn to older characters and I've always struggled to get into the younger roles. It feels good to be finally getting to an age where I'm playing my age.
Christian CookeAt noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.
Allen JohnsonRight now, the old guys, the old farts, if you will, are still running the show, and the women haven't gotten their place yet at all.
Chris MatthewsAll over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power--men who are not bound by the traditions of the past--men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries-- young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.
John F. KennedyWell, we certainly need to raise the retirement age. I've told my 19-year-old and my 22-year-old that they're not going to be getting retirement benefits at age 62.
Ken BuckI thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted, and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity, but I find that thy will knows no end in me, and when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart, and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
Rabindranath TagoreNobody 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. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair; these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. Whatever your years, there is in every being's heart the love of wonder, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
Douglas MacArthurWith Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion. With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race.
Edward KennedyOne of the candidates running for governor is a 100-year-old woman. Yeah, the 100-year-old says she'd like to recall Governor Gray Davis, but more importantly, she'd like to recall where she left her teeth.
Conan O'BrienWhen you get real old, honey, you realize there are certain things that just don't matter anymore. You lay it all on the table. There's a saying, 'Only little children and old folks tell the truth.'
Sarah Louise DelanyA friend often says I'm an old man in a young man's husk. I like that. I am old-fashioned in some ways.
Daniel RadcliffeI am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
Lucille CliftonWith old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later, they are able to whisper to themselves, "You know you are lying, you shameless old sinner! You're acting now, in spite of your 'holy' wrath.
Fyodor DostoevskyThe new millennium sucks! What a disappointment! What's the difference between the old millennium and the new millennium? Nothing! It's the same load of crap with a '2' in the front. When I was a kid, I am old enough so that when I was a kid, I looked forward to the new millennium. When I was young, I said, 'I'm gonna live through a change! A massive change! Things are gonna be different! Things are gonna be great!' Screwed again! No flying cars! No flying cars!
Lewis Black