age

See Also: LIFE, MANKIND, YOUTH

1. Age covered her like a shawl to keep her warm —Rose Tremain
2. Age … indeterminate as a nun —Sharon Sheehe Stark
3. Age is a sickness, and youth is an ambush —John Donne
4. Age is like love, it cannot be hid —Thomas Dekker
5. Age, like a cage, will enclose him —Alastair Reid
6. Age, like distance, lends a double charm —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
7. Age like winter weather … age like winter bare —William Shakespeare

   These comparisons of age to the weather, from the poem The Passionate Pilgrim, are alternated with youth and the weather similes.

   See Also: YOUTH, WEATHER

8. Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings —Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. Ageless as the sun —Algernon Charles Swinburne
10. The age of man resembles a book: infancy and old age are the blank leaves; youth, the preface; and man, the body or most important portion of life’s volume —Edward Parsons Day
11. (Each year in me) ages as quickly as lilac in May —F. D. Reeve

    The simile marks the opening of a poem entitled Curriculum Vitae.

12. Antique as the statues of the Greeks —Edward Bulwer-Lytton
13. As a white candle in a holy place, so is the beauty of an aged face —Joseph Campbell

    See Also: BEAUTY

14. At middle age the soul should be opening up like a rose, not closing up like a cabbage —John Andrew Holmes
15. At thirty-nine, the days grow shorter, and night kneels like a rapist on the edge of your bed —Richard Selzer
16. At twenty man is like a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty nothing at all —Valtasar Gracian
17. Awareness [of one’s own age] comes … like a slap in the eye —Ingrid Bergman, on seeing a friend no longer young

    See Also: REALIZATION

18. Being seventy-five means you sometimes get up in the morning and feel like a bent hairpin —Hume Cronyn, “Sixty Minutes” interview with Mike Wallace, April 12, 1987

    See Also: PAIN, PHYSICAL FEELINGS

19. He could account for his age as a man might account for an extraordinary amount of money he finds has slipped through his fingers —John Yount

    In his novel, Hardcastle, Yount expands on the simile as follows: “Sure, he could think back and satisfy himself that nothing was lost, but merely spent. Yet the odd notion persists that, if he knew just how to do it, he might shake himself awake and discover that he is young after all.”

20. Grow old before my eyes … as if time beat down on her like rain in a thunderstorm, every second a year —Erich Maria Remarque
21. He had reached the time of life when Alps and cathedrals become as transient as flowers —Edith Wharton
22. He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth —Arthur Schopenhauer
23. How earthy old people become … moldy as the gravel —Henry David Thoreau
24. Old as Methuselah —Seventeenth century proverb

    This has inspired many variations including another cliche, “As old as the hills,” generally attributed to Sir Walter Scott’s The Monastery and Dickens’ David Copperfield.

25. I feel age like an icicle down my back —Dyson Carter
26. A man of fifty looks old as Santa Claus to a girl of 20 —William Feather
27. A man’s as old as his arteries —Pierre J. G. Cabanis
28. Most old men are like old trees, past bearing themselves, will suffer no young plants to flourish beneath them —Alexander Pope
29. My age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kind —William Shakespeare
30. Old age is a tyrant which forbids the pleasures of youth on pain of death —Franois, Due de La Rochefoucauld
31. Old age is false as Egypt is, and, like the wilderness, surprises —Babette Deutsch
32. Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
33. Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re on board there’s nothing you can do —Golda Meir, quoted on being over 70 by Oriana Fallaci, L’Europe, 1973
34. Old age is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield —Muriel Spark
35. Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young —Fred Astaire
36. Old age is rather like fatigue, except that you cannot correct it by relaxing or taking a vacation —B. F. Skinner and M. E. Vaughan
37. Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go —B. F. Skinner and M. E. Vaughan
38. Old age took her [Queen Elizabeth] by surprise, like a frost —Anon
39. Old as a garment the moths shall eat up —The Holy Bible/Isaiah
40. Old as a hieroglyph —John Berryman
41. Old as civilization —Morley Safer, “60 Minutes” segment on torture, November 9, 1986
42. Old as death —Elizabeth Barrett Browning
43. Old as God —Delmore Schwartz
44. Old as the sun —Slogan, Sun Insurance Co.
45. Old as history —Slogan, Anheuser-Busch beer
46. (I’m as) old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth —Jonathan Swift
47. (Made her feel) older than coal —Joseph Wambaugh
48. The old man is like a candle before the wind —Hilda Doolittle
49. An old man, like a spider, can never make love without beating his own death watch —Charles Caleb Colton
50. The old man who is loved is winter with flowers —German proverb
51. (The Jewish women were as … ) old as nature, as round as the earth —Thomas Wolfe
52. (The problem now is as) old as realism —Max Apple
53. Old as stone —Marge Piercy
54. Old as the most ancient of cities and older —Saul Bellow
55. Old women and old men … huddle like misers over their bag of life —Randall Jarrell
56. Some men mellow with age, like wine; but others get still more stringent, like vinegar —Henry C. Rowland
57. The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows —the first quarter century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back —F. Scott Fitzgerald
58. To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps —William Wadsworth Longfellow
59. Years steal fire from the mind as vigour from the limb —Lord Byron
60. You know you’re getting older when every day seems like Monday —Kitty Carlisle quoting her mother, 1985 television interview
61. Youth is like a dream; middle age, a forlorn hope; and old age a nostalgia with a pervasive flavor of newly turned earth —Gerald Kersh

(See also OBSOLESCENCE, YOUTH.)

before one had nails on one’s toes See TIME.

brand-new Entirely or completely new; unused; absolutely or perfectly new; also bran-new. This term, in use since 1570, is said to have come from the Anglo-Saxon word brand ‘torch’ and formerly denoted metals or metal articles fresh from the fire or furnace. A synonym is fire-new used by Shakespeare in Richard III:

knee-high to a grasshopper See PHYSICAL STATURE.

long in the tooth Old; showing signs of old age. Although currently used of people, this expression originally applied exclusively to horses. It refers to the seemingly longer length of an older horse’s teeth, due to gum recession.

over the hill Past the time of greatest efficiency or power, past the prime of life, too old, aging; also, past the crisis, over the hurdles. The expression’s latter meanings may be derived from a traveler’s achievement of crossing a hill, after which the going is easier. The phrase’s more common meanings, however, allude to a hill as being the high point, or apex, of one’s effectiveness and authority, after which the only course is downhill. In contemporary usage, the phrase most often describes a person of advancing age.

salad days Youth; the time of juvenile inexperience and naivete; the springtime of one’s life. This expression may have derived as an analogy between green ‘inexperienced, Immature’ and the predominant color of salad ingredients. This comparison was made in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (I,v):

Today, in addition to the phrase’s youthful sense, salad days also refers to any period in a person’s life or career characterized by callowness and unsophistication.