In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy, sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

The ageing process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

I feel I want to be wise with white hair in a tall library in a deep chair by a fireplace.

Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable; precisely the balance and wisdom that comes from long perspectives and broad foundations.

I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.

By the time you're eighty years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it.

I hope I never get so old I get religious.

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusion of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantment of age.

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.