Reflections on Advancing Age

At a meeting this week, several friends and I complained about the troubles of aging.

One of my friends even asked how old I was. I told her (but that number won’t be mentioned here). She told me her age and the one thing I have to celebrate is that she is five years older than me.

Since I didn’t have a good comeback at the time, I went looking for some on the internet, and found the following.

-“Every man desires to live long, but no man desires to be old.” Jonathan Swift

-“Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

-“Men do not quit playing because they grow old — they grow old because they quit playing.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

-“Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.” Theodore Roosevelt

-“Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.” Larry Lorenzoni

-“There is still no cure for the common birthday.” John Glenn

-“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” Anonymous

-“Age is a high price to pay for maturity.” Tom Stoppard

-“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.” Truman Capote

-“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” Mark Twain

-“Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.” Anonymous

-“I complain that the years fly past, but then I look in a mirror and see that very few of them actually got past.” Robert Brault

-“Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” Tom Wilson

-“No man is ever old enough to know better.” Holbrook Jackson

-“I am old enough to see how little I have done in so much time, and how much I have to do in so little.” Sheila Kaye-Smith

-“An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have: the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.” Agatha Christie

-“Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.” Jim Fiebig

-“Everything slows down with age, except the time it takes cake and ice cream to reach your hips.” John Wagner

-“Don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get back up.” John Wagner

-“I don't do alcohol anymore - I get the same effect just standing up fast.” Anonymous

-“First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.” Leo Rosenberg

-“As you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two.” Sir Norman Wisdom

-“Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative.” Maurice Chevalier

-“Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.” Anonymous

-“The idea is to die young as late as possible.” Ashley Montagu

And with those final, somber reflections by those all smarter than me, I close up my computer. Happy old age everyone.