June is a big birthday month in the Burkey household and that inspires this week’s Soul Food for Friday as we look at quotes to reflect on aging. Whether you are young or old (and that’s really a question of perspective), each age has its strengths and weaknesses, it’s joys and sorrows. May this week’s Soul Food for Friday help you to lean more into those strengths and joys of your age.
“Everybody, no matter how old you are, is around 24, 25 in their heart.” — Bruce Willis
“Anybody who can still do at sixty what he was doing at twenty wasn’t doing much at twenty.” — Jimmy Townsend
“When people tell you how young you look, they are telling you how old you are.” — Cary Grant
“When you’re 17, you dream of a summer romance. When you’re 47, … you dream of a summer home.” — Marjorie Garber
“As I get older, I’ve learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.” — Po Bronson
“The key to successful aging is to pay as little attention to it as possible.” — Judith Regan
“If you live to be one hundred, you’ve got it made. Very few people die past that age.” — George Burns
“You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come into contact with a new idea.” — John Nuveen
“To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.” — Bernard Baruch
“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.” — Ogden Nash
“Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick speed.” — Charles Schultz
Bob Hope entertaining troops in 1944
“You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” — Bob Hope
“I have the body of a man half my age. Unfortunately, he’s in terrible shape.” — George Foreman
“For the unlearned, old age is winter. For the learned, it is the season of the harvest.” — Hasidic Saying
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning is young.” — Henry Ford
“I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less the issue, and what you are is the point.” — Susan Sarandon
“It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment; in these qualities old age is usually not only not poorer, but it is even richer.” — Marcul Tullius Cicero
“The oldest trees bear the sweetest fruit.” — German Proverb
“I have now gotten to the age when I must prove I’m as good as I never was.” — Rex Harrison
“The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything; the young know everything.” — Oscar Wilde
“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” — Tom Wilson
“Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” — Jack Benny
“The older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune.” — Irish Proverb
“Old age is like climbing a mountain. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become. But your view becomes much more extensive.” — Ingmar Bergman
“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard there’s nothing you can do.” — Golda Meier
“I don’t know what the big deal is about old age. Old people who shine from inside look 10 to 20 years younger.” — Dolly Parton
“I’m like old wine. They don’t bring me out very often, but I’m well preserved.” — Rose Kennedy on her 100th birthday
“About the time our face clears up, our mind gets fuzzy.” — James Dobson
“People grow old by deserting their ideas. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest, wrinkles the soul. You are a s young as your faith, as old as your doubts; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fears; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.” — General Douglas MacArthur
Here’s to life long learning and staying young! What words feel your soul to be young and full of energy, and to be old and full of wisdom?
Richard Burkey 