Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool.
icon Subscribe



    The Last Word

    Words of Wisdom About Aging

    quote

    Back to Categories

    “Old age is not a defeat but a victory.”

    — Ethel Percy Andrus, a long-time educator and high school principal in California, who later became an elder rights activist and founded the organization The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)

    “Even under the best of circumstances – in twenty-first century America at least – caring for elderly parents ain’t no place for sissies.”

    — Roz Chast, an American cartoonist and author who has published over 1000 cartoons in The New Yorker. Among the books she has produced is Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a graphic memoir, combining cartoons, text, and photographs to tell the story of an only child helping her elderly parents navigate the end of their lives

    “We all think we want to surround ourselves with people who love us, but the key is to surround yourself with people you feel love for. To me, it’s all about love. Everything we do is about love.”

    — Ina Garten, American author, commentator, and culinary expert who has risen to international prominence through her television shows, cookbooks, and food products

    “The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.”

    — Andy Rooney, American Journalist, Humorist, and Television Pundit

    “Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.”

    — Josh Billings, the pen name of 19th-century humorist and lecturer Henry Wheeler Shaw

    “Don’t hide your face with too much gunk,/Especially if it’s old and lined/Don’t answer e-mails when you’re drunk/Don’t live with thirty years of junk—/Those precious things you’ll never find/Stop, if the car is going “clunk.”

    — An excerpt from the poem “Some Rules” by Wendy Cope, a contemporary English poet known for writing humorous poems that rhyme