When I was 14, I was the oldest I ever was. I’ve been getting younger ever since.

Meaning of the quote

This quote is saying that the older you get, the younger you feel compared to how old you used to be. When Shirley Temple was 14 years old, that was the oldest she had ever been in her life. But as she got older, she looked back on her 14-year-old self as being younger than she feels now. The quote is a playful way of saying that the passage of time can make you feel younger, even as your actual age gets higher.

About Shirley Temple

Shirley Temple was a beloved American actress, singer, dancer, and diplomat. She was a box-office sensation as a child star in the 1930s and later went on to have a successful diplomatic career, serving as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, as well as the first female U.S. Chief of Protocol.

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