The old-like children-talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear ones secret are one's own!

When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn.

Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then ... we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many.

Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score.

Death laughs when old women frolic.

He has existed only, not lived, who lacks wisdom in old age.

Old men grasp more at life than babies, and leave it with a much worse grace than young people. It is because all their labours having been for this life, they perceive at last their trouble lost.

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.

For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was.

Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the least resources, especially with which to meet frustration.