Old age - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled, now.

- L. Frank Baum, TheWonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

The first quarter-century of your life was doubtless lived under the cloud of being too young for things, while the last quarter-century would normally be shadowed by the still darker cloud of being too old for them; and between those two clouds, what small and narrow sunlight illumines a human lifetime!

- James Hilton, Lost Horizon (1933)

I have never seen why politeness should be the obligation of the young and rudeness the privilege of age.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon (1942)

Man has natural three-dimensional limits, and he also has four-dimensional ones, considering time as an extension.When he reaches those limits, he ceases to grow and mature, and forms rigidly within the mold of those limiting walls. It is stasis, which is retrogression unless all else stands still as well. A man who reaches his limits is tending toward subhumanity. Only when he becomes superhuman in time and space can immortality become practical.

- Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, ''Time Enough'' (1946)

Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft.

- Ray Bradbury, DandelionWine (1957)

Old age is not an accomplishment; it is just something that happens to you despite yourself, like falling downstairs.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Podkayne of Mars: Her Life and Times (1963)

When a tree is very old, and yet still lives, sometimes the limbs are strangely twisted. Do you understand?

- GeneWolfe, ''The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories'' (1970)

Old age is always horrible. Only fools see anything good in it.

- Ray Nelson, ''Time Travel for Pedestrians'' (1972)

The old ladies sitting on the side porch waved and called out to him, and he waved back at them. They sat like a bunch of ancient crows on a branch. Time was shooting them down, one by one.

- Philip Josй Farmer, ''Stations of the Nightmare - Part One'' (1974)

Throughout most of the past the counsel of the old had been valued, even sought for; it was not until the 20th century that old people were declared obsolete and swept under the rug.

- Edgar Pangborn, ''The Children's Crusade'' (1974)

We believe old people and children are kin. There's more space at both ends of life. That closeness to birth and to death makes a common concern with big questions and basic patterns.

- Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)

The god is most fond of small children and the aged. Small boys and girls have innocence. Old people have tranquillity and wisdom. These are the things that are pleasing to the god.We should strive without effort to retain innocence, and to attain tranquillity and wisdom as soon as we can.

- GeneWolfe, ''The Eyeflash Miracles'' (1976)

Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young.

- Jack B. Sowards, Star Trek II: TheWrath of Khan (film, 1982)

A man my age is willing to accept almost anything. After the initial shock of astonishment that comes each morning when I wake up and discover that I'm still alive, I can face the day with an open mind.

- David Eddings, The Shining Ones (1993)

I feel like I was walking across Nevada, like the pioneers, carrying a lot of stuff I need, but as I go along I have to keep dropping off things. I had a piano once but it got swamped at a crossing of the Platte. I had a good frypan but it got too heavy and I left it in the Rockies. I had a couple ovaries but they wore out around the time we were in the Carson Sink. I had a good memory but pieces of it keep dropping off, have to leave them scattered around in the sage brush, on the sand hills.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Ether, OR'' (1995)

I never asked questions, I was so busy answering them, but am sixty years old this winter and think I should have time for a question. But it's hard to ask. Here it is. It's like all the time I was working keeping house and raising the kids and making love and earning our keep I thought there was going to come a time or there would be some place where all of it came together. Like it was words I was saying, all my life, all the kinds of work, just a word here and a word there, but finally all the words would make a sentence, and I could read the sentence. I would have made my soul and know what it was for. But I have made my soul and I don't know what to do with it.Who wants it?

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Ether, OR'' (1995)