Top 70 Hendrik Groen Quotes (2025 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. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

8. “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

9. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

11. “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

12. “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

13. “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

14. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

20. “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

21. “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

22. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

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

— Hendrik Groen

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

— Hendrik Groen

31. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

33. “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

34. “An eighty-year-old man has managed to climb Mount Everest. I have enough trouble stepping up on the curb. It isn’t fair.”

— Hendrik Groen

35. “Only trivial annoyances still matter. “If Greece goes bankrupt the bingo prizes will probably get smaller,” was Mrs. Schouten’s analysis of the eurozone crisis.”

— Hendrik Groen

36. “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

37. “And after that trip, I’ll have to come up with another plan. As long as there are plans, there’s life.”

— Hendrik Groen

38. “Mrs. Aupers has taken to walking backward of late, because she thinks it makes her have to pee less often.”

— Hendrik Groen

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

— Hendrik Groen

40. “Mrs. Schaap didn’t just slip and fall, as reported; she was actually knocked down by a scooter. The driver, who wishes to remain anonymous, had been a bit too intent on his shopping basket.”

— Hendrik Groen

41. “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

42. “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

43. “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

44. “Grietje said that when the illness is advanced, you might walk right past a mirror without recognizing it’s you. She said she hoped she’d think to herself, “My, what a nice-looking woman!”

— 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. “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

47. “Physicians are so good at what they do these days that you hardly ever see anyone who’s healthy” is how he ended the consultation. I had to think that one over.”

— Hendrik Groen

48. “It seems old-age homes are teeming with junkies. They’re addicted to sleeping pills containing benzodiazepines. Huh? Yes, benzodiazepines. They also help assuage anxiety and fretting. But they come with a dangerous side effect: you might break a hip. In the Netherlands alone they’ve caused over a thousand broken hips, by the experts’ estimate – elderly folks who wake up in the middle of the night in an extra-doddering state, stagger to the bathroom and take a fall. Crack.”

— Hendrik Groen

49. “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

50. “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