Lifestyle 16 Celebrity Quotes on Aging 10/25/2023 | By Terri L. Jones With age comes a variety of aches and pains and other things to complain about, but if you’re lucky, you also gain a certain wisdom and appreciation of life. In these celebrity quotes on aging, some well-known folks share their perspectives on getting older and even on how they’ve found the humor in it! Mae West: “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” While golfing one day, Toby Keith asked Clint Eastwood his secret to a vibrant old age. Eastwood replied, “I just get up every morning and go out. And I don’t let the old man in.” Inspired by this conversation, Toby Keith then wrote the song, “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” which became the theme song of Clint’s movie, “The Mule.” David Bowie: “Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, who served on the Supreme Court until he was 90, once said, “Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.” Apparently, baseball legend Satchel Paige, agreed. He played in the major leagues until he was 47 and was known to say, “Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” When talking about “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” her movie about an older widow who seeks the services of a young sex worker to enliven her sex life, Emma Thompson said, “Everything about it, I hope, will give people a release and a kind of desire to appreciate themselves, to appreciate their bodies, and what their bodies can do for them and not to continually want them to be something else.” Will Rogers: “Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.” Abraham Lincoln: “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” The president definitely made his 56 years count. At one of his shows, Mel Brooks took questions from the audience. One man asked if he wore boxers or briefs. Mel responded, “Depends.” The comedian said the laughter from the audience was so hard that he could feel the air blow him back on the stage! Robert Frost: “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” Regarding the “colonoscopy eve parties” he hosts for his pals Tom Hanks, 67, and Martin Short, 73, and a third friend, Steve Martin, 78, said, “We thought, everybody at our age … at a certain age, you want to get a colonoscopy. We all came over, we played poker and we watched some funny movie and you drink all this stuff.” The next morning, they shared a chauffered car to the procedure, playing cards to determine who had to go last! William Shakespeare: “To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eye’d, Such seems your beauty still.” George Clooney appears to agree with The Bard of Avon: “I’m a big believer in the idea that you can’t try to look younger. You just have to look the best you can at the age you are.” It seems to be working for George, who still looks great at 62! A man once asked Cher, “Don’t you think you’re too old to be running around the stage like that singing rock ’n’ roll?” She replied, “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Mick Jagger?” Or he could also ask Neil Young, who said, “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.” And poet William Butler Yeats, who lived to the age of 74, put the whole topic of aging in perspective: “From our birthday, until we die, is but the winking of an eye.” Above: Screenshot from December appearance by Steve Martin (left) and Martin Short on “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon. Check out the YouTube video of the show for more humor from these two celebrity quotes on aging. Read More Terri L. Jones Terri L. Jones has been writing educational and informative topics for the senior industry for over ten years, and is a frequent and longtime contributor to Seniors Guide.