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

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

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.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

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.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

As you get older, you’re not afraid of doubt. Doubt isn’t running the show. You take out all the self-agonizing.

You tend to feel very hurt when people attack you and feel indifferent when you get praise. You think, ‚Of course they like it. They should like it.‘

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

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 can live for two months on a good compliment.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

I don’t have any terrific self-esteem issues but I do sometimes realise I’ve been too lucky and that I’m over-praised. It makes me nervous. I have this sense of being overrated.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

I didn’t like the way I looked in pictures – when I saw myself on a digital camera, I was like, ‚Eesh.‘

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

Youth is wasted on the young.

That’s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

The unassuming youth seeking instruction with humility gains good fortune.

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other people’s lost memories.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

Prime time for men is, say, 35 to 45. Then they level off and fall off.

The older you get, the better you get.

Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve been so busy damning ourselves for years. We’ve done it all, and yet we don’t take credit for it.

I wasn’t a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.

We have an epidemic of insecure people in our society today.

When you’re young, you’re not afraid of what comes next. You’re excited by it.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‚See if you can blow this out.‘

The good part about youngsters is that they are so fearless. You want to be like them.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

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.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

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.

I remember when I was in high school I didn’t have a new dress for each special occasion. The girls would bring the fact to my attention, not always too delicately. The boys, however, never bothered with the subject. They were my friends, not because of the size of my wardrobe but because they liked me.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

I love people talking about me; I love anybody just looking at me.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Sometimes it’s flattering when people copy you, but sometimes it gets to a breaking point.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o‘ the flatterer.

Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.