Top 70 Hendrik Groen Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Old people and toddlers get along famously.”

— Hendrik Groen

2. “Misschien is het ontbreken van verplichtingen wel het belangrijkste kenmerk van het leven in een bejaardenhuis. Alles wordt voor je geregeld. Nadenken is niet nodig. Je kunt het leven als vla naar binnen lepelen, alle klontjes zijn eruit. Hap, slik, weg.”

— Hendrik Groen

3. “The point of living is the zest for life.”

— Hendrik Groen

4. “Bij het woord bejaardenhuis begon men zich allengs ongemakkelijk te voelen. ‘Bejaarden’ werden ‘ouderen’. Het bejaardenhuis werd een verzorgingshuis. Het verzorgingshuis werd een zorgcenrum. En sinds kort ben ik aangesloten bij een marktgerichte serviceorganisatie voor belevingsgerichte zorg op maat. Ik snap nu wel waarom de zorgkosten de pan uit rijzen.”

— Hendrik Groen

5. “A nation’s level of civilization can be measured by the way it treats its oldest and weakest citizens.”

— Hendrik Groen

6. “His philosophy: the only point of being alive is to kill time as pleasantly as possible. The trick is not to take anything too seriously.”

— Hendrik Groen

7. “What if the paramedics don’t notice your DO NOT RESUSCITATE bracelet until they’ve got your ticker going again with a powerful electric shock? What then? Would they have to desuscitate you? What would people think?”

— Hendrik Groen

8. “In contrast to what you’d expect, narrow-mindedness increases and tolerance lessens with the onset of old age. “Old and wise” is the exception rather than the rule.”

— Hendrik Groen

9. “Ah yes, we live in uncertain times,” I chip in. “Life is a five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with no picture to follow.”

— Hendrik Groen

10. “I’m determined to be a big spender in my old age. I want to empty my savings account before I no longer know what a savings account is for.” That’s the correct approach to dementia, if you ask me.”

— Hendrik Groen

11. “As long as there are plans, there’s life.”

— Hendrik Groen

12. “His philosophy: the only point of being alive is to kill time as pleasantly as possible.”

— Hendrik Groen

13. “Today is World Alzheimer’s Day. What are you supposed to do with that? Try to remember it?”

— Hendrik Groen

14. “Fortunately they have started offering a liquid breakfast here. A liquid lunch as well, if necessary. It saves quite a bit of chewing.”

— Hendrik Groen

15. “A crematorium crisis: the coffin got stuck halfway in, so the oven door couldn’t close properly. The coffin caught fire and the smoke seeped into the chapel. The crematorium had to be evacuated. Anyone who hadn’t already been weeping emerged teary eyed. That’s what I call a spectacular way to say goodbye.”

— Hendrik Groen

16. “Time is slipping through my fingers like a ripe banana.”

— Hendrik Groen

17. “So indeed, yesterday I attended Feel Good Fitness. It was my first time. And also my last. When it was over and the instructor – “Call me Tina” – gushed that I should definitely come again next week, I told her right then and there that once was enough.”

— Hendrik Groen

18. “I am having the kind of day when you wake up totally shattered, do nothing all day, and go to bed at night exhausted from all the resting you’ve done.”

— Hendrik Groen

19. “I’ll give God one last chance: if at three o’clock this afternoon I suddenly find myself able to run the 100-yard dash in 12.4 seconds, I will return to the bosom of the Holy Mother Church. It’s a promise!”

— Hendrik Groen

20. “Mrs. Vergeer pushed Mr. Vergeer down the stairs, wheelchair and all.”

— Hendrik Groen

21. “On parting, a kiss on both cheeks. I felt myself get all hot and bothered. Jesus, I’m eighty-three years old!”

— Hendrik Groen

22. “The procession of pear-shaped ladies in tight leggings parading through the halls every Monday on their way to the gym is extremely off-putting.”

— Hendrik Groen

23. “Killing yourself isn’t against the law. If you succeed, there’s nothing they can do to punish you for it. And if you fail, you could always ask for the death penalty, I suppose.”

— Hendrik Groen

24. “The last Saturday of the month: bingo night. Geriatric gambling addicts competing for a box of cherry-liqueur chocolates. The head of the Residents’ Association takes it upon himself to call out the numbers. Don’t even think of opening your mouth while he’s at it. Whenever the number forty-four is called, Miss Slothouwer always says, “Hunger Winter” and the entire room looks up, perturbed.”

— Hendrik Groen

25. “Another pet catastrophe: Mrs. Schreuder accidentally vacuumed up her canary while she was cleaning its cage.”

— Hendrik Groen

26. “That is the essence of the emptiness of life in here. There are no more goals. No exams to pass, no career ladders to climb, no children to raise. We are too old, even, to babysit the grandchildren.”

— Hendrik Groen

27. “Not letting yourself grow lonely costs a great deal of – sometimes fruitless – effort.”

— Hendrik Groen

28. “They do make a molehill out of every bull in a china shop, don’t they,” said Mrs. Pot upon hearing about the latest poison attack in Syria.”

— Hendrik Groen

29. “Young sunlight on old bones is one of the best antidotes to depression.”

— Hendrik Groen

30. “In the elderly, that hormone surge can be just as great as in younger people. Says the newspaper. Which might explain why, when Eefje is near, I always find myself starting to stammer and stutter a bit.”

— Hendrik Groen

31. “Analysts of world events at our coffee table are not known for nuance, and are not deterred by lack of understanding either.”

— Hendrik Groen

32. “Still, it’s important not to let practical considerations such as daunting toilet facilities stop you from venturing out. Experience has taught us that sad lesson: once old people stop doing something, they are unlikely ever to do it again.”

— Hendrik Groen

33. “Almost every name in my address book is crossed out. Two that aren’t may or may not still be alive. Another doesn’t remember who I am.”

— Hendrik Groen

34. “The past, they’re always going on about the past. Live in the present day for a change...”

— Hendrik Groen

35. “Falls are common in here. Sometimes people fall by tripping over a rug, as I did, but often they’ll just keel over for no good reason. Or they’ll sit down and miss the chair.”

— Hendrik Groen

36. “Teenagers are embarrassed by old people. Old people don’t get it, are hard of hearing, don’t even own a computer, are slow, are clueless about fashion and music, and all they have to offer you is a cookie.”

— Hendrik Groen

37. “I don’t really mind Beatrix, but I do think it’s time for her to take a step back. She ought to devote more time to her painting and less time to her hairdresser. That stiff hairdo has irked me for years. I shouldn’t let it aggravate me, but I can’t help it.”

— Hendrik Groen

38. “Good Friday. When I was young we had to observe a moment of silence at three o’clock to think about poor Jesus. If in today’s Netherlands a father allowed his son to be nailed to the cross, our forensic psychiatrists would be at a loss as to what to do with the crazy psychopath.”

— Hendrik Groen

39. “The hemming and hawing is courtesy of Mrs. Duchamps, head of nursing, a small, snippy woman who always seems to know best. She’s French: she should have stayed in France. Arrogant and unsympathetic, but she does have a cute French accent.”

— Hendrik Groen

40. “Two beds down, a woman was with her husband who had just come out of surgery. All she talked about for half an hour was herself, especially her own ailments. I did something I’d never have dared to do before. I asked her, “Hadn’t you better trade places with him?”

— Hendrik Groen

41. “Mrs. Van Diemen is considering a face-lift. “What’s the plastic surgeon supposed to do with all the extra double chins?” Evert asked straight-faced.”

— Hendrik Groen

42. “I may possibly be a candidate for Alzheimer’s myself, since I’m finding crude jokes much funnier now than I once did. I am growing less respectable all the time.”

— Hendrik Groen

43. “He showed us his new bracelet, proud as a peacock. He maintained that his mother-in-law had given it to him. It read DO NOT RESUSCITATE. “Do you know what it means?” asked Eefje kindly. No, he did not. I asked if he was certain his mother-in-law had given it to him.”

— Hendrik Groen

44. “Sunday, April 14 What you might call a stellar day for our home yesterday: one stroke, one broken hip, and one near-asphyxiation on a butter cookie. The ambulance came and went three times in a single afternoon.”

— Hendrik Groen

45. “The record for the shortest stay is held by a lady whose name we never even came to know. A day and a half after arriving through the front door in a wheelchair, she departed again through the back door in a coffin.”

— Hendrik Groen

46. “There we go: yesterday we had the first complaints about the warm weather! “It always gets so muggy here in the Netherlands!” according to fat Bakker. Only two days ago he was still complaining about the cold. Sometimes I’d like to kill him.”

— Hendrik Groen

47. “Loneliness can sometimes feel even worse when you’re with other people.”

— Hendrik Groen

48. “The bill before Parliament proposing that citizens have the right to clean diapers has been withdrawn. Just as I’m having to start wearing them!”

— Hendrik Groen

49. “Mrs. Sitta, seeing the toing and froing of ambulances, asked if bingo would be canceled. “Those of us who are fit shouldn’t have to suffer on account of those who are not,” she brazenly declared. You’d almost wish that at her next bingo game she would have a stroke, break a hip and choke to death on a cookie.”

— Hendrik Groen

50. “I tend to choose the path of least confrontation. My specialty: wanting to please everybody.”

— Hendrik Groen