As we age our bodies start to react to the wear and tear of life. One morning we realize that groaning we hear as we get out of bed is coming from us. The aches and pains become old friends, suddenly we realize the great satisfaction our fathers got from making those same groaning noises and we find them equally liberating. But one thing that doesn’t get worn out or stop working as we age is our sense of humor.

Comedian George Burns, who lived to age 100 and only stopped performing after a fall two years earlier in 1994, was better known in the last 20 years of his life than he had been at any other time. George Burns became the symbol of aging well: keen wit, sharp mind, active and involved in life and still working at what he loved best.

Simply from a great respect for the man, the performer and because his material is still as funny as it was when it was new, I present these examples of his ageless humor (pun intended).

“Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.”

“By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.”

“You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.”

“When I was a boy, the Dead Sea was only sick.”

“People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.”

“I was always taught to respect my elders and I’ve now reached the age when I don’t have anybody to respect.”

“I’m going to stay in show business until I’m the last one left.”

“Age to me means nothing. I can’t get old; I’m working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you’re working, you stay young. When I’m in front of an audience, all that love and vitality sweeps over me and I forget my age.”

~ George Burns ~ January 20, 1896 - March 9, 1996