If you’re looking for inspiration on successful ageing, the best people to ask are those that have been there and done that. Some of our favourite comics, actors and storytellers also have insight on what it means to grow older.

From the witty to the thought-provoking, you’re sure to find something here that will have you nodding along and wondering where all those years really went! Here are our top picks for best quotes on ageing:

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”

― Mark Twain

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”

― Ellen DeGeneres

“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”

― Madeleine L’Engle

“Just remember, when you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.”

― Charles M. Schulz

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

― Sophia Loren

“You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.”

― Garrison Keillor, Pontoon

“There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”

― Milan Kundera

“Is someone different at age 18 or 60? I believe one stays the same.”

― Hayao Miyazaki

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

― Mark Twain

“Old age ain’t no place for sissies.”

― Bette Davis

“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.”

― Michael Pritchard

“The good thing about being old is not being young.”

― Stephen Richards

“I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label.”

― Louis L’Amour, The Lonesome Gods

“Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character.”

― Clarence Day Jr.

“About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.”

― Gloria Pitzer

“It’s easy to grow old if you haven’t grown up”

― John Hively

“You never stop being yourself on the inside, whatever age people think you are by looking at you from the outside.”

― Ali Smith, Winter

“The defects of our youth sustain us in old age.”

― Marty Rubin

“Don’t let ageing get you down. It’s too hard to get back up.”

― John Wagner

“Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional.”

― Walt Disney