Elderly Quotes

“THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINS


Laugh, I tell you
And you will turn back
The hands of time.

Smile, I tell you
And you will reflect
The face of the divine.

Sing, I tell you
And all the angels will sing with you!

Cry, I tell you
And the reflections found in your pool of tears -
Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterday
To guide you through the fears of tomorrow.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Wenna followed us out. "You've done him some good, Clary, I have to say! He's got color in his cheeks, and he's stepping along as if he was sixty again," she told Goodwin as she walked us to the gate. "You'll come back?"
"Of course," Goodwin said. "But thank Cooper for his improved spirits. Once he'd insulted her a few times, he was in the pink.”
― Tamora Pierce, Bloodhound

“She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“‎You cannot correct an old person every time they say something offensive. You would never make it through Thanksgiving dinner!”
― Stephen Colbert

“The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“I asked him if it were a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agreed, But said it was the desert's dream not his. And he told me that in a year or so, when he had aged enough for any man, then he would walk into the wind, until he saw the tents. This time, he said, he would go on with them.”
― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

“Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.”
― Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader

“In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“I'm on the Internet. I stay informed. They let old people on the Internet, you know.”
― Stephen Emond, Winter Town

“I respect traditional people - they have the eyes which see value in the tarnished. This is a gift in itself. Tradition requires a wealth of discipline in order to be adhered to, hence it is rarely found in youth.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“By the time I wrote this book I needed to look at heroics from outside and underneath, from the point of view of the people who are not included. The ones who can’t do magic. The ones who don’t have shining staffs or swords. Women, kids, the poor, the old, the powerless. Unheroes, ordinary people—my people. I didn’t want to change Earthsea, but I needed to see what Earthsea looked like to us.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

“A young child is a leader to an elderly person once his purpose has a faithful, sincere and trustworthy influence on people. Leadership is not restricted to position and age; it is self-made and influencial. Everyone has this self-leadership quality.”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigor where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay.”
― H.H. Munro, The Chronicles of Clovis

“the old ones
hold their kiss
in stones.”
― Monica Laura Rapeanu, Orbul de la Cină

“When we attempt to clear up the mess others have made, or when we love the unlovely, we demonstrate the kind of weirdness God likes. We give the lie to the evolutionary survival of the fittest maxim...”
― Ann Benton, If It's Not Too Much Trouble

“Words were few and failing between them as though the silence that sat with them had laid its old lips on theirs and sucked them dry of speech. For where could one begin? With the weather? But here there was no weather. These few sad rooms were the old man's world. His horizons were all walls.”
― Michael Bedard, Redwork

“You're mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund”
― Ben Elton, Meltdown

“Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldn't harm them to starve a little.
The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the children's bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldn't cry so much for food. The old starved silently. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“I've never

stopped wanting to cross
the equator, or touch an elk's
horns, or sing Tosca or screw
James Dean in a field of wheat.
To hell with wisdom. They're all wrong:
I'll never be through with my life.”
― Rita Dove, On the Bus With Rosa Parks

“But I was awake, sitting by the window looking down at the trailer and Mr. Zoltan's truck. I could not sleep. That is how it is with folks my age. We take naps during the day, and then we cannot sleep at night. I think that it is because God is getting us ready for the grave. Is that right? Did He ever tell you? ("The Little Stranger")”
― Gene Wolfe, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

“Adults don't believe children. They don't believe old ladies either.”
― Francesca Gibbons, Beyond the Mountains

“You make it to a hundred and ten you can do whatever you want. White people haven't killed you yet, you get a free pass.”
― Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto

“If white people haven't killed you yet, you can do what you want. You didn't have to reach a hundred years to get to that place. In a world this low, dumb, and cruel, every day white people ain't killed you yet is a win. It was after midnight. He'd survived another gauntlet.”
― Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto

“I've seen death's bastard face many times. Ain't come for me yet, the prick.' - the old mumblecrust.”
― Peter Hackshaw, The Darkest Core

“...I am an old man, and most people hate me. But I don't like them either...”
― Frank Capra, "It's a Wonderful Life" the screenplay

“The beauty of the elderly is the glory of their wisdom.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“In western narrative, isolation is liberation, the elderly is inconvenient, apathy is aesthetic - invasion is ambition, exploitation is exploration, indifference is etiquette, appropriation is innovation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“The doctor delivered a devastating diagnosis: a severe stroke with paralysis of the right side of her body, brought on by prolonged starvation.
In the days that followed, Irina’s condition steadily deteriorated. The family took turns caring for her, carefully following every medical instruction, yet the decline was obvious. Within days, her left leg failed as well. She could no longer speak—only stare ahead in silent resignation. Whenever one of her loved ones approached her bedside, tears streamed soundlessly down her face.
Now, sitting beside his grandmother’s pillow, Peter watched the boundless sorrow in her eyes as she looked at him.
“Grandma, everything will be all right. You’ll recover,” the boy lied with all the gentleness he was capable of. “I love you.”
He pressed his face to her chest and kissed her. Heavy tears rolled down Irina’s cheeks. A lump rose in Peter’s throat. He could not drive away the terrible thought: How could it be that only yesterday someone so alive, loving, and active—though ill—could so suddenly become a helpless ruin? It felt unnatural. It felt unjust.
With each passing day, life faded from Irina. A week after the stroke, she died quietly in her sleep.
At his grandmother’s funeral, Peter wept as he never had before—and never would again. He did not hide his tears. He kept kissing her cold lips, cheeks, and forehead. But each kiss only made the grief heavier.
— Volodymyr Shablia, Stone. Book Three


Context note:
Set during the Holodomor of 1933 in Ukraine, this scene portrays one of the famine’s most tragic realities: the rapid decline and death of the elderly and the sick often among the first victims of starvation. Malnutrition weakened the body’s ability to survive illness, and strokes, infections, and organ failure became fatal in a society stripped of food and medical resources. Behind the statistics of millions dead were intimate family tragedies like this one.”
― Володимир Шабля, Камінь. Біографічний роман. Книга третя. Несправджені сподівання.: Все буде Голодомор.