How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.

When I see myself as an old woman, I just think about being happy. And hopefully, I’ll still be fly.

I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God’s waiting room.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

You see the film, you might be entertained, and if it’s not a great film, it loses its power very quickly. I think even simply acceptable books stay with us a lot longer.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

I’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.

As long as possible, I would really like to complete one marathon per year. Though my time has been slowing down as I get older, it has become a very important part of my life.

Youth is wasted on the young.

I do the same exercises I did 50 years ago and they still work. I eat the same food I ate 50 years ago and it still works.

Old age may have its limitations and challenges, but in spite of them, our latter years can be some of the most rewarding and fulfilling of our lives.

The older you get, the better you get.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death.

Worry – a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.

I figure I’ll be champ for about ten years and then I’ll let my brother take over – like the Kennedys down in Washington.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

I don’t know if I could do this with the same energy, and in the same way – all the costume changes and glitter and hair and makeup – all the time. When I’m in my 50s, I kind of think I’ll want to be in a garden.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

I’ve been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

All diseases run into one, old age.

The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

At my advanced age – I’m now an octogenarian – I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture.

Rose Adams is a wonderful Christian woman who cared for my mother, Morrow Coffey Graham, in her last years of life.

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been.

As I approached my 95th birthday, I was burdened to write a book that addressed the epidemic of ‚easy believism.‘ There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works, they are going to Heaven.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It’s truly ridiculous.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

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.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Life, if well lived, is long enough.

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

I try to encourage all my teammates, and I sure hope that some day all athletes – my kids, high school kids – get the same level of care I get. Because you can play for a long period of time without having knee replacements, without having all the major head trauma that people are dealing with.

I was the kid that was the 199th pick that never had the body for it. People didn’t think I’d play one year in the NFL, and now I’m going on my 17th year.