Ripe Old Age Quotes & Sayings

In Indiana we had a queen we named Alice which lived to the ripe old age of eight years and two months and did excellent work in her seventh year. There can be no doubt about the authenticity of this statement. We sold her to John Chapel of Oakland City, Indiana, and she was the only queen in his yard with wings clipped. This, however is a rare exception. At the time I was experimenting with artificial combs with wooden cells in which the queen laid. — Jay Smith

He returned to Cambridge feeling, at the ripe old age of twenty, that life was passing him by. — Salman Rushdie

I began auditioning for acting jobs at the ripe old age of 12. Thirty years later, including a 15-year run on television, I sometimes just get offers for work. Often, however, I am still required to run pell-mell around Los Angeles or New York, interviewing for film and TV jobs. — Diane Farr

I know more about Emily Bronte than anyone I know. I know enough about her family to have been a part. I've walked with her on her damp luscious lonely moors, watched her strain to write on miniscule scraps of paper, seen her hide her works from prying eyes.
I've brooded alongside her and participated in her taciturnity. Before her death at the ripe old age of 30, I nursed her from the things that ultimately killed her: tuberculosis with a side order of Victorian thinking. — Chila Woychik

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country. This is not so strange when you reflect that from the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture ... — W. Somerset Maugham

I am involved in a lot of nonprofits. And when I reached the ripe old age of 60, I wanted to provide leadership to some I had been involved in. — David Rubenstein

May you keep dreaming until the day you die. May imagination overtake memory. May you die young at a ripe old age. — Mark Batterson

I must do what I can to make myself intelligible to you. Our natures, however, are so different, that this may not be easy. Men and women live but to die; we, that is such as I-we are but a few-live to live on. Old age is to you a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we are to our perfection. Your perfection is a poor thing, comes soon, and lasts but a little while; ours is a ceaseless ripening. I am not yet ripe, and have lived thousands of your years-how many, I never cared to note. The everlasting will not be measured. — George MacDonald

There was once a bunny who lived by the ocean. Every day he would stroll along the sandy beach and pick up thoughts which had washed ashore. He would find them in shells, under rocks, and sometimes even tangled up in seaweed. "Oh, this is a good one," he would say, "We see chaos, but if we look carefully, if we look beneath the chaos, we find perfection." And into his bucket the thought would go. When the bunny had reached a ripe old age he gathered all the thoughts together and placed them carefully into a large silver cauldron heated by the fires of life. Using a straw broom, he stirred them thoroughly, and as he was stirring he listened carefully. Much to his surprise he heard the ocean singing a wordless song of incomparable beauty. The bunny closed his eyes and said, "Ah, it was all worth it."

--The Blue Monk of Niim — Various

When we try to understand something, more often than not, we kill it, and now I can feel the dangers of this encroaching on me: cynicism, bitterness, and infinite sadness...It's impossible to live if you're too aware, too thoughtful. Take nature for example: everything that lives happily and too a ripe old age is not very intelligent. Tortoises live for centuries, water's immortal, and Milton Friedman's still alive. — Martin Page

I think it's best to pick a biographical subject who lives to a ripe old age. Older people tend to relax and speak their minds. They're dropping some of the masks that they've been wearing. There's a candor. — David McCullough

Deke: 'You know what I'm wonderin'?'
Malachi: 'No, and to tell the truth, I don't care'
Deke: 'I'm wonderin' how you've managed to live to the ripe old age of 36, when it's a known fact that you've been brain-dead since birth'

'Strength of will', was the flat reply — Lynn Turner

The "Hazeldean heart" was a proverbial boast in the family; the Hazeldeans privately considered it more distinguished than the Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had permitted most of them to survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old age, when they died of some quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean had defied it, and it took its revenge, and took it savagely. — Edith Wharton

Given that there is every indication I'll be checking the single box on all official forms from now until I'm dead, hopefully at the ripe old age of 98 like Grandma Sanders, an unreasonable number of cats seems to be the next logical step in my life. — Lindsey Stuffel

At Evensong one night, while Holly played at sax and Mrs. Bethel Utemeyer joined in, I saw him: Holiday, racing past a fluffy white Samoyed. He had lived to a ripe old age on earth and slept at my father's feet after my mother left, never wanting to let him out of his sight ... I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down. — Alice Sebold

We all wish to reach a ripe old age, but none of us are prepared to admit that we are already there. — Francisco De Quevedo

Those who are born of parents broken with old age, or of such as are not yet ripe or are too young, or of drunkards, soft or effeminate men, want a great and liberal ingenuity or wit. — Thomas Willis

I would like to live to a ripe old age and raise watermelons in Wyoming. — Lou Reed

One of the great reasons, I am sure, why [David O.] McKay has lived to such a good, ripe, and vigorous old age has been the fact that as a young man he developed habits of retiring to bed early, arising early, generally before sun up, when his mind was clear and his body vigorous, to do the day's work. — Ernest L. Wilkinson

Dying is beautiful- even the first time around, at the ripe old age of 20. It's not easy most of the time, but there is real beauty to be found in knowing that your end is going to catch up with you faster than you had expected, and that you have to get all your loving and laughing and crying done as soon as you can. — Norma Klein

At the ripe old age of seventeen, Donna had decided that "happily ever after" didn't exist for freaks like her. — Karen Mahoney

I want to die young at a ripe old age. — Ashley Montagu

I believe you can train yourself to become a positive thinker, but you must cultivate a desire to develop the skill of setting personal worthy and realistic goals. I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don't set goals in our life and learn how to master the technique of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When you learn to master the principle of setting a goal, you will then be able to make a great difference in the results you attain in this life. — M. Russell Ballard

My Bubbie lived to 104, which is probably a little too old to consider a ripe old age, because she had already started to turn. I still say she died young. — Gilbert Gottfried

Bulgarian phrase zryala vuzrast, ripe age, which they use for the period before one is truly old. She — Garth Greenwell

Do the thing you love to do. Hank Williams died at the ripe old age of twentynine. Stevie Ray Vaughan at thirty-five. Jesus at thirtythree. Don't think you're special and the Lord's gonna bless you with time. — Jill S. Alexander

I am beginning to realize, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, that one of the problems I have in life is a tendency to completely romanticize how things will be in the future, which inevitably leads to disappointment because it's pretty much never, never, what I expect — Jane Green

But the trouble is that conscious futility is something only for the young. One cannot go on "despairing of life" in to a ripe old age. One cannot go on being "decadent", since decadence means falling and one can only said to be falling if one is going to reach the bottom reasonably soon. Sooner or later one is obliged to adopt a positive attitude toward life and society. — George Orwell

Now that I've reached the ripe old age of retirement, I feel it my duty to teach you everything I've learnt about love, so listen closely. Love is like ... That's as far as I've gotten I'm afraid. — Ben Mitchell

I was already devouring literature and I was the ripe old age of 15 when I decided to be an actor. I just thought plays were the most fantastic way of expressing life. I thought I'd discovered Shakespeare - 'hey, there's a new guy in town, don't know if anyone's read him.' I was just excited about the whole thing, from day one. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

My blog is a celebration of the unexpected, settled, happy life I find myself living in Portland, Maine, at the ripe old age of fifty with someone I deeply love and am very happy with. That's part of why I started the blog. — Kate Christensen

While we were hastening to Father Moon to tickle his beard a little, the sun was radiating splendor into the observation cabin; now he is squinting modestly at us from the side. I wouldn't have believed the central body of the solar system capable of such skipping about. The worst of it is that, with his eccentricities, he has had an effect upon old Mother Earth, whom I have always considered a trustworthy lady of ripe old age. To say nothing of the moon, this old bachelor goes his own way, and still has the audacity to make advances to Mother Earth. — Otto Willi Gail

I have observed that, generally speaking, network sports announcers did not tend to live to a ripe old age. On the other hand, I had noticed that baseball announcers seemed to go right on forever. Bob Elson has been calling balls and strikes since the beginning of time. Harry Caray must have started with Abner Doubleday, and was still going strong. — Lindsey Nelson

Hundreds of studies have shown that people overrate their health, leadership ability, intelligence, professional competence, sporting prowess, and managerial skills. People also hold the nonsensical belief that they are inherently lucky. Most people think they are more likely than the average person to attain a good first job, to have gifted children, and to live to a ripe old age. They also think that they are less likely than the average person to be the victim of an accident, crime, disease, depression, unwanted pregnancy, or earthquake. Why — Steven Pinker

I thought I'd live to a ripe old age, because I always felt there was a lot to do. I had a driven feeling. I always thought in the present. — Debbie Harry

So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature: This is old age; but then thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change To withered weak and grey. — John Milton

Ripe old age, cheerful, useful, and understanding, is one of the finest influences in the world. — Ida Tarbell

IF ONE WISHES to live to a ripe old age, there are certain activities one should avoid. Chief among these is eating anything larger than one's own head - but not so very far down the list is any activity that involves clambering around the outside of a spaceship. — Charles Stross

Just call me a family man and an actor who digs his whole scene, side interests and all. Just say I feel mighty good at the ripe old age of 27. — Bobby Darin

Of all intellectual friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in science or literature or art. It is, by these private friendships, even more than by public performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is perpetuated from age to age. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

I don't tap dance, and I don't think you can learn to tap dance in three weeks at my ripe old age. — Huey Lewis

When young, we trust ourselves too much, and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth, timid caution of age. Manhood is the isthmus between the two extremes; the ripe and fertile season of action, when alone we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute. — Charles Caleb Colton