Good old age. [ Genesis xv. 15 ]

As old as the itch. [ Proverb ]

An old nought
Will never be ought. [ Proverb ]

Truth never grows old. [ Proverb ]

Never to old to learn. [ Proverb ]

Old vessels must leak. [ Proverb ]

An old man among boys. [ Proverb ]

Virtue never grows old. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Old men are soon angry. [ Proverb ]

Sorrow and an evil life,
Makes soon an old wife. [ Proverb ]

The soul never grows old [ Longfellow ]

An old knave is no babe. [ Proverb ]

Old bees yield no honey. [ Proverb ]

Old father antic the law. [ William Shakespeare ]

No fool like an old fool. [ Proverb ]

Old foxes want no tutors. [ Proverb ]

A chip off the old block.

New grief awakens the old. [ Proverb ]

An old friend is the best. [ Gratian ]

Of young men die many,
Of old men escape not any. [ Proverb ]

An old ape hath an old eye. [ Proverb ]

Old men are twice children. [ Proverb ]

As spiteful as an old maid. [ Proverb ]

Old sores are hardly cured. [ Proverb ]

Old maids lead apes in hell. [ Proverb ]

A young whore, an old saint. [ Proverb ]

A lie never lives to be old. [ Sophocles ]

A young saint, an old devil. [ Proverb ]

That old bald cheater, Time. [ Ben Jonson ]

An old man is twice a child. [ Shakespeare ]

Child of the earth's old age. [ Miss Langdon ]

An old friend is a new house. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

An old dog barks not in vain. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Old women's gold is not ugly. [ Proverb ]

Old sacks want much patching. [ Proverb ]

As grave as an old gate-post. [ Proverb ]

Few people know how to be old. [ La Roche ]

An old fox understands a trap. [ Proverb ]

An old feud is easily renewed. [ Italian Proverb ]

Nature is God's Old Testament. [ Theodore Parker ]

Old dogs bark not for nothing. [ Proverb ]

Here lies the body of Ann Mann,
Who lived an old woman,
And died an old Mann. [ Epitaph ]

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die. [ Wordsworth ]

An old wrinkle never wears out. [ Proverb ]

Power seldom grows old at Court. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Old men feel young men's knocks. [ Proverb ]

Young men may die, old men must. [ Proverb ]

An old courtier, a young beggar. [ Proverb ]

Old age is an incurable disease. [ Seneca ]

A young prodigal, an old mumper. [ Proverb ]

Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song;
Love that is too hot and strong
Burneth soon to waste;
Still I would not have thee cold,
Not too backward or too bold;
Love that lasteth till 'tis old
Fadeth not in haste. [ Old Ballad ]

Old men think themselves cunning. [ Proverb ]

The best mirror is an old friend. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The old echoes are long in dying. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

Old reckonings make new quarrels. [ Proverb ]

A pedant is a precocious old man. [ De Boufflers ]

To put new handles to an old pot. [ Proverb ]

Old age is a heavy burden to man.

Art is pleasure, even in old age. [ E. Quellin ]

He loves his old hereditary trees. [ Cowley ]

Old thanks pay not for a new debt. [ Proverb ]

An old man is a bed full of bones. [ Proverb ]

'Tis an old maxim in the schools
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit. [ Swift ]

When all the sins are old in us.
And go upon crutches, covetousness
Does but lie in her cradle. [ Decker ]

An old ox makes a straight furrow. [ Proverb ]

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow! [ Alfred Tennyson ]

A pretty pig makes an ugly old sow. [ Proverb ]

An old whore's curse is a blessing. [ Proverb ]

It is an old maxim in the schools
That flattery's the food for fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit,
Will condescend to take a bit. [ Swift ]

Old buildings may fall in a moment. [ Proverb ]

Old praise dies unless you feed it. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A young serving-man, an old beggar. [ Proverb ]

Old birds are not caught with chaff. [ Proverb ]

Our youth we can have but today;
We may always find time to grow old. [ Bishop Berkeley ]

Never too old to learn what is good. [ Proverb ]

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet, The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men! [ Longfellow ]

The young may die, but the old must! [ Longfellow ]

What would not I give to wander
Where my old companions dwell?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder:
Isle of Beauty, fare thee well! [ T. H. Bayly, Isle of Beauty ]

Be old early you you can long be so. [ Proverb ]

An old cat sports not with her prey. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

'Tis well to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new. [ Maturin ]

A young man idle is an old man needy. [ Proverb ]

An old physician, and a young lawyer. [ Proverb ]

Cleanliness is the toilet of old age. [ Mme. Necker ]

If the young knew - if the old could! [ Proverb ]

Old men that dandle madams hug death. [ Proverb ]

An old dog does not bark for nothing. [ Italian Proverb ]

What should we speak of
When we are old as you?
When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December. [ William Shakespeare ]

Memory is what makes us young or old. [ Alfred de Musset ]

Though old and wise, yet still advise. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

To bring an old house over one's head. [ Proverb ]

An old man never wants a tale to tell. [ Proverb ]

A deep meaning resides in old customs. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Navigation adds new worlds to the old. [ S. Cabot ]

Be sure no lie can ever reach old age. [ Sophocles ]

I own I feel traces of an old passion. [ Virgil ]

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste. [ Bryant ]

For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old. [ Longfellow ]

Remove an old tree and you'll kill it. [ Proverb ]

An old novel has a history of its own. [ Alexander Smith ]

That is the old tune upon the bagpipe. [ Proverb ]

Old hosts give entertainment to sharks. [ Proverb ]

Gather the rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying. [ Herrick ]

A youth of frolic, an old age of cards. [ Pope ]

It is difficult to grow old gracefully. [ Madame de Stael ]

Fish and guests smell at three days old. [ Proverb ]

Wanton kitlings may make sober old cats. [ Proverb ]

Defend me, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old with drawing nothing up. [ William Cowper ]

When the old dog barks he gives counsel. [ Proverb ]

As innocent as a devil of two years old. [ Proverb ]

Electric telegraphs, printing, gas,
Tobacco, balloons, and steam.
Are little events that have come to pass
Since the days of the old regime.
And, spite of Lempriere's dazzling page,
I'd give - though it might seem bold -
A hundred years of the Golden Age
For a year of the Age of Gold. [ Henry S. Leigh ]

Your old brass will bring you a new pan. [ Proverb ]

When an old dog barks, one must look out. [ German Proverb ]

A young trooper should have an old horse. [ Proverb ]

When he is forsaken, Withered and shaken.
What can an old man do but die? [ Hood ]

Oh, only a free soul will never grow old! [ Jean Paul Richter ]

A deep meaning often lies in old Customs. [ Schiller ]

It is an old story, yet remains ever new. [ Heinrich Heine ]

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal. [ H. W. Shaw ]

An old fox needs not to be taught tricks. [ Proverb ]

It is good sheltering under an old hedge. [ Proverb ]

You see me here, - a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both! [ William Shakespeare ]

Don't cross the bridge till you come to it
Is a proverb old, and of excellent wit. [ Longfellow ]

An old dog can't alter his way of barking. [ Proverb ]

Young men want to be faithful and are not,
old men want to be faithless and cannot. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

In love, old wood burns better than green.

An old ox will find a shelter for himself. [ Proverb ]

As the old cock crows, so crows the young. [ Proverb ]

Be not the first by whom the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. [ Pope ]

Old fools are more foolish than young ones. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Old cats may lap as well as young children. [ Proverb ]

Too much is always bad; old proverbs call
Even too much honey nothing else than gall. [ Anon ]

Young men are made wise, old men become so. [ Proverb ]

He hath a colt's tooth yet in his old head. [ Proverb ]

Be not choleric. It will make you look old. [ Proverb ]

An old bird is not to be caught with chaff. [ Proverb ]

As demure as an old whore at a christening. [ Proverb ]

There is no hope - the future will but turn
The old sand in the falling glass of time. [ R. H. Stoddard ]

It is hard to break an old hog of a custom. [ Proverb ]

Quartane agues kill old men and cure young. [ Proverb ]

An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
Give him a little earth for charity! [ William Shakespeare ]

The youth fights that the old man may enjoy. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie. [ William Shakespeare ]

Old porridge is sooner warmed than new made. [ Proverb ]

Time-honored golf! I heard it whispered once
That he who could not play was held a dunce
On old Olympus, when it teemed with gods. [ G. F. Carnegie ]

Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye. [ William Shakespeare ]

In old age nothing any longer astonishes us. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Old Age, a second child, by nature curst
With more and greater evils than the first.
Weak, sickly, full of pains: in every breath
Railing at life, and yet afraid of death. [ Churchill ]

As the old cock crows, the young one learns. [ Proverb ]

Begin to patch up thine old body for heaven. [ William Shakespeare ]

In bringing up a child, think of its old age. [ Joubert ]

The old horse must die in somebody's keeping. [ Proverb ]

Young men soon give and soon forget affronts;
Old age is slow in both. [ Addison ]

His hair just grizzled as in a green old age. [ Dryden ]

Friday night's dreams on Saturday told
Are sure to come true - be they never so old. [ Old Sayings ]

A song to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;
Here's health and renown to his broad,
green crown, And his fifty arms so strong.
There's fear in his frown when the goes down,
And the fire in the West fades out;
And he showeth his might on a wild midnight,
When the storms through his branches shout. [ H. F. Chorley ]

When a new book comes out, I read an old one. [ Rogers ]

Old custom without truth is but an old error. [ Proverb ]

Remembering of old injuries invites new ones. [ Proverb ]

Old men and travellers may lie with authority. [ Proverb ]

When all sins grow old, covetousness is young. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Old men go to death; death comes to young men. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Sweet letters of the angel tongue,
I've loved ye long and well.
And never have failed in your fragrance sweet
To find some secret spell -
A charm that has bound me with witching power,
For mine is the old belief,
That midst your sweets and midst your bloom,
There's a soul in every leaf! [ M. M. Ballou ]

Old acquaintances are better than new friends. [ Mme. du Deffand ]

We pay when old for the excesses of our youth. [ Proverb ]

But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry. [ William Shakespeare ]

None is so old but he hopes for a year longer. [ Proverb ]

A young man negligent, an old man necessitous. [ Proverb ]

A man of the old-fashioned virtue and loyalty. [ Ter ]

To grow old at court, and die in the hospital. [ Proverb ]

'Tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburden'd crawl toward death. [ William Shakespeare ]

Every age confutes old errors, and begets new. [ Proverb ]

Let me play the fool
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is lost labour to play a jig to an old cat. [ Proverb ]

He that would be well old must be old betimes. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Of bard and chief. Old Erin's native Shamrock. [ Moore ]

Old wine and an old friend are good provisions. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The immortal mind, superior to his fate.
Amid the outrage of external things,
Firm as the solid base of this great world.
Rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds!
Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on!
Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky!
Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire
Be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene,
The unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck;
And ever stronger as the storms advance,
Firm through the closing ruin holds his way,
When nature calls him to the destined goal. [ Akenside ]

Old age though despised, is coveted by all men. [ Proverb ]

Money, as well as need makes the old wife trot. [ Proverb ]

Poverty on an old man's back is a heavy burden. [ Proverb ]

Men may become old, but they never become good. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

Rashness belongs to youth, prudence to old age. [ Cicero ]

Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint. [ Proverb ]

Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
But leave us still our old nobility. [ Lord J. Manners ]

Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old. [ Pope ]

Flowers are Love's truest language; they betray,
Like the divining rods of Magi old,
Where precious wealth lies buried, not of gold,
But love - strong love, that never can decay! [ Park Benjamin ]

Borne on the swift, tho' silent wings of time,
Old age comes on apace, to ravage all the clime. [ Beattie ]

An old man in a house is a good sign in a house. [ Heb. Proverb ]

Years do not make sages; they only make old men. [ Madame Swetchine ]

Trade hardly deems the busy day begun,
Till his keen eye along the sheet has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by.
And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh;
While the grave mother puts her glasses on.
And gives a tear to some old crony gone.
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down,
To know what last new folly fills the town;
Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things.
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings. [ Sprague ]

As you are old and reverend, you should be wise. [ William Shakespeare ]

As necessary as an old sow among young children. [ Proverb ]

Science surpasses the old miracles of mythology. [ Emerson ]

A young twig is easier twisted than an old tree. [ Proverb ]

A man may be young in years and yet old in hours. [ Proverb ]

You become milder and better as old age advances. [ Horace ]

There are more old drunkards than old physicians. [ Proverb ]

We must always have old memories and young hopes. [ Arsene Houssaye ]

An old man's staff is the rapper of death's door. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones. [ President Donald J. Trump, Presidential Inaugeration Speech, Jan 20, 2017 ]

That place that does contain
My books, the best companions, is to me
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes, for variety, I confer
With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,
Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy,
Deface their ill-placed statues. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]

Old camels carry young camels' skins to themarket. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Old gossips are usually young flirts gone to seed. [ J. L. Basford ]

It is late ere an old man comes to know he is old. [ Proverb ]

The old man's staff is the rapper at death's door. [ Proverb ]

The youth is better than the old age of friendship. [ Hazlitt ]

Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss and drank her whispered tales.
They say that Love would die when Hope was gone.
And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. [ Tennyson ]

Old Time, the clock setter, that bald sexton, Time. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is a most sad sight to see an old man in misery. [ Proverb ]

Old men, when they scorn young, make much of death. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

There is no better looking-glass than an old friend. [ Proverb ]

An old warrior is never in haste to strike the blow. [ Metastasio ]

Swift defined observation to be an old man's memory. [ James A. Garfield ]

Friendship is a youth to which old age succeeds not. [ At-Tunikhi ]

An old cart well used may last out a new one abused. [ Proverb ]

Earnestness is a quality as old as the heart of man. [ G. Gilfillan ]

Lightness of carriage and beauty are old companions. [ Proverb ]

I'll make the fur fly about the ears of the old cur. [ Butler ]

The hell for women who are only handsome is old age. [ Saint-Evremond ]

As we grow old we become more foolish and more wise. [ Rochefoucauld ]

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief, Are mine alone. [ Byron ]

And otherwhyles with amorous delights
And pleasing toyes he would her entertaine.
Now singing sweetly to surprise her sprights,
Now making layes of love and lover's paine,
Bransles, ballads, virelayes, and verses vaine!
Oft purposes, oft riddles, he devys'd;
And thousands like which flowed in his braine,
With which he fed her fancy, and entys'd
To take to his new love, and leave her old despys'd. [ Spenser ]

Begone, old Care, and I prithee begone from me;
For in faith, old Care, thee and I shall never agree. [ Playford ]

Gratitude preserves old friendship, and procures new. [ Proverb ]

An old goat is never the more reverend for his beard. [ Proverb ]

A colt you may break, but an old horse you never can. [ Proverb ]

An old man, if he be a trifler, is every one's scorn. [ Proverb ]

The old withie-tree would have a new gate hung at it. [ Proverb ]

An old fox does not run into the snare a second time. [ German Proverb ]

Welcome, my old friend, Welcome to a foreign fireside. [ Longfellow ]

Young men should be learners, when old men are actors. [ Proverb ]

I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. [ Emerson ]

Make the young one squeak and you'll catch the old one. [ Proverb ]

Young prodigal in a coach will be old beggar bare-foot. [ Proverb ]

Neither marry nor buy an old beast; the reason is plain. [ Proverb ]

The corn hides itself in the snow as an old man in furs. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

He wrongs not an old man who steals his supper from him. [ Proverb ]

Better shelter under an old hedge than a young furzbush. [ Proverb ]

What tutor shall we find for a child of sixty years old? [ Proverb ]

Under the hands of unlucky persons, opportunities wax old. [ Proverb ]

Every plan desires to live long; but, no man would be old. [ Swift ]

It it often easier to make new, than to cobble up the old. [ Proverb ]

To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair. [ George Eliot ]

Things subject to mutability are every moment growing old. [ Dr. Winter ]

The fears of old age disturb us, yet how few attain it? — [ La Bruyre ]

One seeks new friends only when too well known by old ones. [ Mme. de Puisieux ]

We extol what is old, regardless of what is of modern date. [ Tac ]

What old men can do always falls short of what they desire. [ A. Ricard ]

Old men have one foot in the grave, and many young men too. [ Proverb ]

The twilight that surrounds the border-land of old romance. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

There may be such things as old fools and young counsellors. [ Proverb ]

A heart doesn't go with modern dress. It makes one look old. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

We are ever young enough to sin, never old enough to repent. [ Proverb ]

To woo is a pleasure in a young man, but a frenzy in an old. [ Proverb ]

Old men remember such things as they delighted in when young. [ Proverb ]

The enthusiasm of old men is singularly like that of infancy. [ Gerard de Nerval ]

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age. [ Victor Hugo ]

Short words are best and old words when short are best of all. [ Winston Churchill ]

A merry old fool and a gay apish matron are domestic monsters. [ Proverb ]

When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Better never have been handsome when young, than ugly when old. [ Proverb ]

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age. [ Aristotle ]

Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein. [ Bible ]

An old wise man's shadow is better than a young buzzard's sword. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

To remember- to forget: alas! this is what makes us young or old. [ A. de Musset ]

The offspring of those that are very young or very old lasts not. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Consider, the devil is old; therefore grow old to understand him. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Young men think old men fools; but old men know the young are so. [ Proverb ]

Old houses mended cost little less than new before they're ended. [ Gibber ]

Old Time, who changes all below to wean men gently for the grave. [ Mrs. Norton ]

What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance. [ Goethe ]

Children cry for nuts and apples, and old men for gold and silver. [ Proverb ]

Rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man. [ Bible ]

A young woman married to an old man, must behave like an old woman. [ Proverb ]

In a better world we will find our young years and our old friends. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Half light, half shade, she stood a sight to make an old man young. [ Tennyson ]

Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to be so. [ Camden ]

Better far to die in the old harness than to try to put on another. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]

And winter, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines. [ Alexander Smith ]

Hence (from sensual indulgence) sudden deaths and intestate old age. [ Juv ]

Master, master! news, old news, and such news as you never heard of. [ William Shakespeare ]

Custom, though never so ancient, without truth, is but an old error. [ Cyprian ]

If you lie upon roses when young, you will lie upon thorns when old. [ Proverb ]

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

I owe it to old age, that my relish for conversation is so increased. [ Cicero ]

A sensual and intemperate youth hands over a worn-out body to old age. [ Cicero ]

A person with a bad name is already half hanged, saith the old proverb. [ Whipple ]

Trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable. [ Carlyle ]

Whatever poet, orator, or sage May say of it, old age is still old age. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones. [ Abbe Trublet ]

Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot. [ Swift ]

Better have an old man to humour, than a young rake to break your heart. [ Proverb ]

The old falls, the time changes, and new life blossoms out of the ruins. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

A man as he manages himself may die old at thirty and a child at eighty. [ Proverb ]

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools. [ George Chapman ]

Love for old men is sun on the snow: it dazzles more than it warms them. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice. [ Byron ]

A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living. [ Steele ]

Nothing's more playful than a young cat, nor more grave than the old one. [ Proverb ]

Old age is a tyrant that forbids the pleasures of youth on pain of death. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure. [ Ben Jonson ]

When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death. [ La Bruyere ]

I resemble the poplar, - that tree which, even when old, still looks young. [ Joubert ]

In love affairs, a young shepherdess is a better partner than an old queen. [ De Finod ]

The defects of the mind, like those of the face, grow worse as we grow old. [ Rochefoucauld ]

An old coquette has all the defects of a young one, and none of her charms. [ A. Dupuy ]

There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Old age is not so fiery as youth, but when once provoked cannot be appeased. [ Proverb ]

The great objection to new books is, that they prevent our reading old ones. [ Joseph Joubert ]

Old age is the repose of life; the rest that precedes the rest that remains. [ Robert Collyer ]

Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. [ Emerson ]

The sages of old live again in us, and in opinions there is a metempsychosis. [ Glanvill ]

Old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, old books to read. [ Alonzo of Arragon ]

Old trees in their living state are the only things that money cannot command. [ Landor ]

Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace, thou shalt be buried in a good old age. [ Genesis ]

Age is a tyrant who forbids at the penalty of life all the pleasures of youth. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

The end crowns all; and that old common arbitrator, Time, will one day end it. [ William Shakespeare ]

When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the herd. [ Thoreau ]

What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease. [ Richter ]

Loss of strength is more frequently due to the faults of youth than of old age. [ Cicero ]

Ever, as of old, the thing a man will do is the thing he feels commanded to do. [ Carlyle ]

How many persons fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old! [ Stanislaus ]

We must consider humanity as a man who continually grows old, and always learns. [ L. Figuier ]

Stinging envy is more merciful to good things that are old than such as are new. [ Phaedr ]

Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old, their beards of icicles and snow. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Gay mellow silks her mellow charms infold, and nought of Lyce but herself is old. [ Young ]

Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try. [ William Shakespeare ]

And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one. [ Montaigne ]

Before old age, it was my chief care to live well; in old age, it is to die well. [ Seneca ]

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses. [ Bacon ]

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, alike fantastic if too new or old. [ Pope ]

Old age has deformities enough of its own; do not add to it the deformity of vice. [ Cato ]

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall. The holly branch shone on the old oak wall. [ Thos. Haynes Bayly ]

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old. [ Lord Chesterfield ]

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]

An intemperate, disorderly youth will bring to old age, a feeble and worn-out body. [ Cicero ]

The silver-leaved birch retains in its old age a soft bark; there are some such men. [ Auerbach ]

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in manhood just, and in old age prudent. [ Socrates ]

The ancients (i.e. the Greeks and Romans) are the only ancients that never grow old. [ C. J. Weber ]

Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, controls youth, and delights old age. [ Lactantius ]

Honor is an old-world thing; but it smells sweet to those in whose hand it is strong. [ Ouida ]

When an old man will not drink, you may safely promise him a visit in the next world. [ Proverb ]

Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age; but the heart can. [ Richter ]

Love is old, old as eternity, but not outworn; with each new being born or to be born. [ Byron ]

Not till a new thing sprouts up does a man ever enjoy intelligently that which is old. [ Rückert ]

Wise men, like wine, are best when old; pretty women, like bread, are best when young. [ Haliburton ]

The heart of woman never grows old; when it has ceased to love, it has ceased to live. [ Rochepedre ]

A charmed life old goodness hath; the tares may perish, but the grain is not for death. [ Whittier ]

Discouragement is of all ages: in youth it is a presentiment, in old age a remembrance. [ Balzac ]

What pretty things men will make for money, quoth the old woman, when she saw a monkey. [ Proverb ]

It is a truth but too well known, that rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age. [ Cicero ]

Hence it is that old men do plant young trees, the fruit whereof another age shall take. [ Sir J. Davies ]

He rejoices more than an old man who has put off old age, (i.e. has become young again). [ Proverb ]

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. [ Bacon ]

I love everything that's old, - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. [ Goldsmith ]

Error is very well so long as we are young, but we must not drag it with us into old age. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

For my own part, I had rather be old only a short time than be old before I really am so. [ Cicero ]

Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by, love; this is an old rule. [ Buddha ]

Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting. [ Lowell ]

I know not any season of life that is passed more agreeably than that of virtuous old age. [ Cicero ]

Youth is presumptuous, old age is timid: the former aspires to live, the latter has lived. [ Mme. Roland ]

An old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave. [ Wordsworth ]

Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die. [ De La Bruyere ]

Old men who preserve the desires of youth lose in consideration what they gain in ridicule. [ Napoleon I ]

The second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe. [ Wm. Mountford ]

Philosophy writes treatises on old age and friendship; Nature makes those on youth and love. [ D'Alembert ]

To harbor hatred and animosity in the soul makes one irritable, gloomy, and prematurely old. [ Auerbach ]

Old men are always jealous: they are like the greedy child who wants the cake it can not eat. [ A. Ricard ]

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]

We hope to grow old, yet we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and shrink from death. [ La Bruyère ]

He comes to you with a tale which holds children from play and old men from the chimney-corner. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes. They were easiest for his feet. [ John Selden ]

An old proverb attributes happiness to him who expects little and thereby avoids disappointment. [ Henry D. Chapin ]

We hope to grow old, and yet we fear old age; that is, we are willing to live, and afraid to die. [ La Bruyfere ]

Young, one is rich in all the future that he dreams; old, one is poor in all the past he regrets. [ Rochepedre ]

Superstitions would soon die out if so many old women would not act as nurses to keep them alive. [ Punch ]

Great was the respect paid of old to the hoary head, and great the honour to the wrinkles of age. [ Ovid ]

I have been young, and am now old, and have not yet known an untruthful man to come to a good end. [ Berthold Auerbach ]

The old woman would never have looked for her daughter in the oven, had she not been there herself. [ Proverb ]

The most dangerous weakness of old people who have been amiable is to forget they are no longer so. [ Rochefoucauld ]

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power. [ Pascal ]

A friendship will be young after the lapse of a century; a passion is old at the end of three months. [ Nigu ]

To make love when one is young and fair is a venial sin: it is a mortal sin when one is old and ugly. [ De Bernis ]

Old books, as you well know, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

For life in general, there is but one decree: youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret. [ Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) ]

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

Remorse of conscience is like an old wound; a man is in no condition to fight under such circumstances. [ Jeremy Collier ]

We can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

He who laughs too much hath the nature of a fool, he that laughs not at all hath the nature of an old cat. [ Proverb ]

Nothing makes old people who have been attractive more ridiculous than to forget that they are so no longer. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date. [ Colton ]

Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age, attend to thy salvation. [ Voltaire ]

One should never make one's debut with a scandal, one should reserve that to give interest to one's old age. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

From yon blue heaven above us bent, the grand old gardener and his wife smile at the claims of long descent. [ Tennyson ]

Most nations, as well as men, are impressible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. [ Rousseau ]

We must not take the faults of our youth with us into our old age, for old age brings with it its own defects. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The old saying is expressed with depth and significance: On the pinnacle of fortune man does not long stand firm. [ Goethe ]

Some old men like to give good precepts to console themselves for their inability no longer to give bad examples. [ A. Dupuy ]

Happy is the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it. [ Hare ]

A man's diary is a record in youth of his sentiments, in middle age of his actions, in old age of his reflections. [ J. Q. Adams ]

Life sues the young like a new acquaintance.... To us, who are declined in years, life appears like an old friend. [ Goldsmith ]

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk. [ George MacDonald ]

It is observed of gold, by an old epigrammatist, that to have it is to be in fear, and to want it, to be in sorrow. [ Johnson ]

A woman, when she has passed forty, becomes an illegible scrawl; only an old woman is capable of divining old women. [ Balzac ]

Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The hair is the finest ornament women have. Of old, virgins used to wear it loose, except when they were in mourning. [ Luther ]

To make good use of life, one should have in youth the experience of advanced years, and in old age the vigor of youth. [ Stanislaus ]

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old; they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. [ Gabriel García Márquez ]

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram. [ Whipple ]

The old proverb about having too many irons in the fire is an abominable old lie. Have all in, shovel, tongs, and poker. [ Adam Clarke ]

The greater number of nations, as of men, are only impressible in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. [ Rousseau ]

Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth. [ Cicero ]

The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

I never knew the old gentleman with the scythe and hour-glass bring anything but gray hairs, thin cheeks, and loss of teeth. [ Dryden ]

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then a young heart beating under fourscore winters. [ Emerson ]

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack. [ Johnson ]

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vita of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun. [ Colton ]

An aged Christian with the snow of time on his head may remind us that those points of earth are whitest that are nearest heaven. [ E. H. Cbapin ]

We like morality when we are old, because we make of it a merit for the numerous privations which have become for us a necessity. [ Mme. de Salm ]

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

The Soul is born old, but it grows young; that is the comedy of life. The Body is born young and grows old; that is Life's tragedy. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

No school is more necessary to children than patience, because either the will must be broken in childhood or the heart in old age. [ Richter ]

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times? [ Montaigne ]

The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone. [ Niebuhr ]

Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous. [ Bruyere ]

It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded. [ Montaigne ]

To a father waxing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter; sons have spirits of a higher pitch, but less inclined to endearing fondness. [ Euripides ]

Science corrects the old creeds ... and necessitates a faith commensurate with the grander orbits and universal laws which it discloses. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Come forward, some great marshal, and organize equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks. [ Thackeray ]

An old Spanish writer says, To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; but to return good for evil is godlike. [ Whately ]

However old a conjugal union, it still gamers some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow a few flowers still bloom. [ Mme. de Stael ]

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old. [ George Eliot ]

However old a conjugal union, it still garners some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow some flowers still bloom. [ Mme. de Stael ]

New or Novel? New and novel are sometimes used indiscriminately. New is opposed to old, novel to known; as, a new house, a novel invention. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

That the women of the Old Testament were dressed with oriental richness there is no doubt, nor are they censured for so arraying themselves. [ Charlotte M. Yonge ]

Death is as near to the young as to the old; here is all the difference: death stands behind the young man's back, before the old man's face. [ Rev. T. Adams ]

Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure. [ Sirach ]

Diseases crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them as so many anatomies. [ Burton ]

It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enable us to recall them with satisfaction when old. [ Leigh Hunt ]

The place where two friends first met is sacred to them all through their friendship, all the more sacred as their friendship deepens and grows old. [ Phillips Brooks ]

It is books that teaches us to refine our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enables us to recall them with satisfaction when old. [ L. Hunt ]

Avarice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road, the nearer we approach to our journey's end? [ Cicero ]

The happiest end of life is this: when the mind and the other senses being unimpaired, the same nature which put it together takes asunder her own work. [ Cicero ]

Old age is the night of life, as night is the old age of the day. Still, night is full of magnificence; and, for many, it is more brilliant than the day. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of doing them to others. [ Sir W. Temple ]

In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times they used the objects of faith to show their powers of painting. [ John Ruskin ]

The law of perseverance is among the deepest in man; by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. [ Carlyle ]

It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear. [ Wilhelm von Humboldt ]

Women live only in the emotion that love gives. An old lady confessed that she had loved much,when young: Ah! she exclaimed, the exquisite pain of those days! [ A. Houssaye ]

A human heart can never grow old, if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the reproduction of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn leaves. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]

Let's take the instant by the forward top; for we are old, and on our quick'st decrees the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time steals, ere we can effect them. [ William Shakespeare ]

A good library is an anchor to keep a young man from roving, and a helm to aid an old man to gain the greatest possible benefit from what remains of the breeze. [ W. D. Haley ]

Nothing lives in literature but that which has in it the vitality of the creative art; and it would be safe advice to the young to read nothing but what is old. [ K P. Whipple ]

Which of us that is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes lie life, youth, the careless sports, the pleasures and passions, the darling joy. [ William M. Thackeray ]

The head learns new things, but the heart forevermore practices old experiences. Therefore our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting. [ Ruskin ]

Love is a bird of passage that women await with curiosity in youth, retain with pleasure in maturer years, and allow to escape with regret when old age creeps upon them. [ A. Ricard ]

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God's favour. [ Bacon ]

The heart never grows better by age, I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older. [ Chesterfield ]

Like an old woman at her hearth, we warm our hands at our sorrows and drop in faggots, and each thinks his own fire a sun in presence of which all other fires should go out. [ J. M. Barrie ]

Short is the life of those who possess great accomplishments, and seldom do they reach a good old age. Whatever thou lovest, pray that thou mayest not set too high a value on it. [ Martial ]

The female heart is just like a new india-rubber shoe; you may pull and pull at it till it stretches out a yard long; and then let go, and it will fly right back to its old shape. [ Judge Haliburton ]

The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one. [ Goldsmith ]

Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples. [ Pope ]

The reading of romances will always be the favorite amusement of women: old, they peruse them to recall what they have experienced; young to anticipate what they wish to experience. [ A. Ricard ]

The old pool shooter has won many a game in his life. But now it was time to hang up the cue. When he did all the other cues came crashing to the floor. Sorry, he said with a smile. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Genius never grows old - young today, mature yesterday, vigorous tomorrow, always immortal. It is peculiar to no sex or condition, and is the divine gift to woman no less than to man. [ Juan Lewis ]

Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of eternity. [ Bishop Heber ]

We rarely repent of having spoken too little, very often of having spoken too much: a maxim this which is old and trivial, and which every one knows, but which every one does not practise. [ La Bruyère ]

Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

There may often be less vanity in following the new modes than in adhering to the old ones. It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting, them. [ Joubert ]

It would be well for us all, old and young, to remember that our words and actions, ay, and our thoughts also, are set upon never-stopping wheels, rolling on and on unto the pathway of eternity. [ M. M. Brewster ]

As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them. [ Beecher ]

Friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists; except in the cases of kindred or other legal affinity, it is in reality no longer expected or recognised as a virtue among men. [ Carlyle ]

The day of life spent in honest and benevolent labor comes in hope to an evening calm and lovely; and though the sun declines, the shadows that he leaves behind are only to curtain the spirit unto rest. [ Henry Giles ]

It is observed at sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to scour the anchor. [ Samuel Smiles ]

Most women spend their lives in robbing the old tree from which Eve plucked the first fruit. And such is the attraction of this fruit, that the most honest woman is not content to die without having tasted it. [ O. Feuillet ]

For the short-lived bloom and contracted span of brief and wretched life is fast fleeting away! While we are drinking and calling for garlands, ointments, and women, old age steals swiftly on with noiseless step. [ Juvenal ]

Sing of the nature of women, and then the song shall be surely full of variety, - old crotchets and most sweet closes. It shall be humorous, grave, fantastical, amorous, melancholy, sprightly, - one in all, all in one. [ Marston ]

A woman whose great beauty eclipses all others is seen with as many different eyes as there are people who look at her. Pretty women gaze with envy, homely women with spite, old men with regret, young men with transport. [ D'Argens ]

Give him gold enough, and marry him to a puppet, or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with never a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses; why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal. [ William Shakespeare ]

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face, - compare notes and chat the hour away. [ Hazlitt ]

There is nothing like youth. The middle aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile, like most kings. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the richness of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me? [ Thackeray ]

Many classes are always praising the by-gone time, for it is natural that the old should extol the days of their youth; the weak, the era of their strength; the sick, the season of their vigor; and the disappointed, the springtime of their hopes! [ C. Bingham ]

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit. [ Edwin Percy Whipple ]

Dress has a moral effect upon the conduct of mankind. Let any gentleman find himself with dirty boots, old surtout, soiled neckcloth and a general negligence of dress, and he will in all probability find a corresponding disposition by negligence of address. [ Sir Jonah Barrington ]

In Athens the ladies were not gaudily but simply arrayed, and we doubt whether any ladies ever excited more admiration. So also the noble old Roman matrons, whose superb forms were gazed on delightedly by men worthy of them, were always very plainly dressed. [ George D. Prentice ]

These studies are the food of youth and the consolation of old age; they adorn prosperity and are the comfort and refuge of adversity; they are pleasant at home and are no encumbrance abroad; they accompany us at night, in our travels, and in our rural retreats. [ Cicero ]

Some will read only old books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern publications: others will only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book because they know the author: others would also read the man. [ Disraeli ]

Oh! woe to him who first had the cruelty to ridicule the name of old maid, a name which recalls so many sorrowful deceptions, so many sufferings, so much destitution! Woe to him who finds a target for his sarcasm in an involuntary misfortune, and who crowns white hair with thorns! [ E. Souvestre ]

We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint; and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners. [ Whipple ]

My May of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. [ William Shakespeare ]

He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in the business of daily virtuous living; he who trains us to see old truth under academic formularies may be wise or not, as it chances, but we love to see wisdom in unpretending forms, to recognise her royal features under a week-day vesture. [ Carlyle ]

Nature, when she amused herself by giving stiff manners to old maids, put virtue in a very bad light. A woman must have been a mother to preserve under the chilling influences of time that grace of manner and sweetness of temper, which prompt us to say, One sees that love has dwelt there. [ Lemontey ]

I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression. [ J. Beaumont ]

The failure of his mind in old age is often less the result of natural decay than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment brings indolence: indolence, decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy. [ Sir Benjamin Brodie ]

It is necessary to look forward as well as backward, as some think it is always necessary to regulate their conduct by things that have been done of old times, but that past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on an alternative of some past that went before it. [ Madame De Stael ]

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. Little old New York's good enough for us - that's what they sing. [ O. Henry, A Tempered Wind ]

First, girls, don't smoke--that is, don't smoke to excess. I am seventy-three and a half years old, and have been smoking seventy-three of them. But I never smoke to excess - that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time. Second, don't drink - that is, don't drink to excess. Third, don't marry - I mean, to excess. [ Mark Twain, "Advice To Girls", 1909 ]

I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner! We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us, as village children, a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us by its old perfume, an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora clouds of our first dim feelings! [ Richter ]

In most old communities there is a commonsense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity. [ Whipple ]

A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar; the case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor toward the latter part of life. [ Shenstone ]

The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion, - Death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, - of Immortality! [ Charles Dickens ]

There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than jails. [ Mark Twain, "Public Education Association" Speech ]

A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second; for there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. [ Bacon ]

Who is there who has not experienced that often a nosegay of wild flowers, which was to us as village children a grove of pleasure, has in after years of manhood, and in the town, given us. by its old perfume an indescribable transport back into godlike childhood; and how, like a flower-goddess, it has raised us into the first embracing Aurora-clouds of our first dim feelings? [ Richter ]

There have been many men who left behind them that which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in the greatness of ages that are gone rather than in that of our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, being dead, we yet speak? [ Beecher ]

It is the saying of an old divine, Two things in ray apparel I will chiefly aim at - commodiousness and decency; more than these is not commendable, yet I hate an effeminate spruceness as much as a fantastic disorder. A neglected comeliness is the best ornament. It is said of the celebrated Mr. Whitfield that he always was very clean and neat, and often said pleasantly that a minister of the gospel ought to be without a spot. [ J. Beaumont ]

I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. [ Chesterfield ]

Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of miser-life are breathing. A forfeited bond twinkles in the hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle has caught a stray tint from his usurer. Features of exquisite beauty are seen and loved; but the old nature of avarice frets under the glow of devotion. Pathos staggers on the edge of farce. [ Willmott ]

What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. [ Charles Lamb ]

I smoke in bed until I have to go to sleep; I wake up in the night, sometimes once, sometimes twice; sometimes three times, and I never waste any of these opportunities to smoke. This habit is so old and dear and precious to me that I would feel as you, sir, would feel if you should lose the only moral you've got - meaning the chairman - if you've got one: I am making no charges: I will grant, here, that I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn't break my bonds. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, Okay, as long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know. He started telling his story, about the treasure and his life and all, and I thought: This story isn't too long. But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, Uh-oh, this story is getting long. But then the story was over, and I said to myself: You know, that story wasn't too long after all. I forget what the story was about, but there was a good movie on the plane. It was a little long, though. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Since I was seven years old I have seldom take, a dose of medicine, and have still seldomer needed one. But up to seven I lived exclusively on allopathic medicines. Not that I needed them, for I don't think I did; it was for economy; my father took a drug-store for a debt, and it made cod-liver oil cheaper than the other breakfast foods. We had nine barrels of it, and it lasted me seven years. Then I was weaned. The rest of the family had to get along with rhubarb and ipecac and such things, because I was the pet. I was the first Standard Oil Trust. I had it all. By the time the drugstore was exhausted my health was established, and there has never been much the matter with me since. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

I was walking in the street, a beggar stopped me, — a frail old man. His inflamed, tearful eyes, blue lips, rough rags, disgusting sores . . . oh, how horribly poverty had disfigured the unhappy creature! He stretched out to me his red, swollen, filthy hand. He groaned and whimpered for alms. I felt in all my pockets. No purse, watch, or handkerchief did I find. I had left them all at home. The beggar waited and his out-stretched hand twitched and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and confused, I seized his dirty hand and pressed it. Don't be vexed with me, brother; I have nothing with me, brother. The beggar raised his bloodshot eyes to mine; his blue lips smiled, and he returned the pressure of my chilled fingers. Never mind, brother, stammered he; thank you for this — this, too, was a gift, brother. I felt that I, too, had received a gift from my brother. [ Ivan Tourgueneff ]

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]