Top 70 Hendrik Groen Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

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

— 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. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

8. “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

9. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

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

— Hendrik Groen

13. “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

14. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

19. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

21. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

23. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

25. “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

26. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

28. “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

29. “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

30. “Forgive me, I’m being a bit crude and rude about this, but I can’t make the reality prettier than it is: sad, grim, and funny all at once.”

— Hendrik Groen

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

— Hendrik Groen

32. “Woe to the man who thinks he is worth fifty-six times more than the woman who lovingly performs the dirty work.”

— Hendrik Groen

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

— Hendrik Groen

34. “I made him solemnly swear he would leave the fish alone. He swore “on my mother’s life” that he would. His mother has been dead for twenty-five years.”

— 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. “Mr. Timmerman seems to have his eye on Eefje, which I can perfectly well understand. He hasn’t got a chance, however; Eefje will have nothing to do with him because he’s a big show-off and also because he stinks.”

— Hendrik Groen

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

— Hendrik Groen

38. “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

39. “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

40. “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

41. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

43. “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

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

— Hendrik Groen

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

— Hendrik Groen

46. “Mr. Bakker, this home’s biggest pain in the neck, ran his Canta through the car wash but forgot to close his window. He went to push the window button, but it was too late, he was already sitting inside an aquarium.”

— Hendrik Groen

47. “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

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. “In Norway they’re watching a TV show that’s just twelve hours of nonstop knitting: “from sheep to sweater.” To promote the notion of “Slow TV.”

— Hendrik Groen

50. “To celebrate the fact that I don’t have lung cancer, I lit up an extra cigar.”

— Hendrik Groen