Old age is a great ugliness, but everyone wants it — growing old is difficult, painful, and humbling, yet everyone prefers it to the alternative. A wry, ironic acknowledgment that life, however hard, is preferred over death.
Sicilian humour about death and ageing has a particular quality: it is direct, never morbid, and always rooted in the recognition that death is familiar and need not be feared into silence. In a culture where death came often and without warning — through sea, through poverty, through disease, through violence — the people developed a certain ease with mortality that allowed them to joke about it without disrespect. This proverb is a perfect example: it does not romanticise age or pretend that the aching back and fading sight are not real. It simply points out the paradox that complaining about growing old is a luxury, the proof that you are still alive. It is used to silence complaints about getting older, to encourage those who dread what lies ahead, and to give perspective to the young who take vitality for granted.
A classic Sicilian proverb blending irony and philosophy about aging and mortality, reflecting the island's unsentimental but affectionate relationship with death. Common in both rural and urban Sicilian speech.
An old man complaining about his ailments to a doctor
— Dottore, mi fa tutto male. La schiena, le ginocchia, gli occhi. — Signore, la vecchiaia è una gran bruttezza, ma tutti la vogliono. Lei sta bene.
— Doctor, everything hurts me. My back, my knees, my eyes. — Sir, old age is a great ugliness, but everyone wants it. You are fine.
Two elderly women at a bench, complaining about getting old
— Ai nostri tempi eravamo belle. Guarda come siamo diventate. — La vecchiaia è una gran bruttezza, ma tutti la vogliono — è meglio dell'alternativa, cara mia.
— In our day we were beautiful. Look what we have become. — Old age is a great ugliness, but everyone wants it — it is better than the alternative, my dear.
A son gently reminding his mother to stop complaining about her age
— Ho settant'anni e mi sento vecchia. — Mamma, la vecchiaia è una gran bruttezza, ma tutti la vogliono. Il nonno non è arrivato a sessanta.
— I am seventy and I feel old. — Mum, old age is a great ugliness, but everyone wants it. Grandpa did not make it to sixty.
A birthday toast for an eighty-year-old
La vecchiaia è una gran bruttezza, ma tutti la vogliono — e tu, nonno, sei arrivato a ottant'anni bellissimo. Cin cin.
Old age is a great ugliness, but everyone wants it — and you, grandpa, have reached eighty beautifully. Cheers.