Aging Quotes

The amount of women you hear say, If Donald—or Arthur—or whatever his name was—had only lived. And I sometimes think but if he had, he'd have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.

~ Agatha Christie

Suddenly it seemed to me that I looked back from a great distance on that smile and saw it all again - the smile and the day, the whole sunny, sad, funny, wonderful day and all the days that we had spent here together. What was I going to do when such days came no more? There could not be many; for we were a family growing old. And how would I learn to live without these people? I who needed them so little that I could stay away all year - what should I do without them?

~ Jetta Carleton

Butterfly KissesAged imperfectionsstitched upon my faceyears and years of wisdomearned by His holy grace.Quiet solitude in a humble homeall the family scattered nowlike nomads do they roam.Then a giftsent from abovea memorypure and tangiblewrapped in innocence andunquestioning love.A butterfly kisslands gently upon my cheekfrom an unseen childa kiss most sweet.Heaven grants graceand tears followas youth revisitsthis empty hollow.

~ Muse

As we get older, it matters less where you are and more who you're with.

~ Crystal Woods

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. _Mark Twain (Author)

~ Kat Kaelin

Silent our body is a sacred temple, A place to connect with other people. Can't we just stay any younger? Really, we might keep it stronger, Elated, rather than so tilted or feeble!!

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

To spend your time trying to make your body flawless is to waste your time. Even if it appears to match some externalized ideals of perfection for a moment, your physical self will wrinkle and age. Work on your mind. Work on your legacy.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

The older a wizard grows, the more silent he becomes, like a woody vine growing over time to choke a garden path, deep and full of moss and snakes, running everywhere, impenetrable.

~ F.t. Mckinstry

There’s nothing wrong with accumulating wealth, receiving recognition for your efforts, and having some power and status--what’s wrong is when you think that’s who you are.

~ Morton Shaevitz

As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.

~ Colson Whitehead

I learned not to fear infinity,The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,The wheel turning away from itself,The sprawl of the wave,The on-coming water.

~ Theodore Roethke

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy-girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To live, to die, to overdose, to fall in a coma in the street... it is all the same. It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death... And they should! ...For they are in life.

~ Roman Payne

It takes courage to dream, to face our futures and the limiting forces within us. It takes courage to be determined that, as we slow down physically, we are going to grow even more psychologically and spiritually. Courage, the philosopher Aristotle taught us, is the most important of all the virtues, because without it we can’t practice any of the others. Courage is the nearest star that can guide our growth. Maya Angelou said we must be courageous about facing and exploring our personal histories. We must find the courage to care and to create internally, as well as externally, and as she said, we need the courage “to create ourselves daily as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings.

~ Bud Harris

Honor LostAmbulant sunshine piercedthe soot covered glass ~the feeble man wandered byin this ritual morning pass ...

~ Muse

But when you’re a kid, it isn’t chaos. It’s just a heartbeat. Your house isn’t floating through space, it sits on the ground. Once you get old enough you start to see that color is just paint and doors are just wood. Then, at some point, that feeling of home vanishes entirely. And… that’s what I fear. That nothing will ever make me feel like I’m safe again. That once you leave home, you never get it back.

~ Ryan Galloway

Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing.

~ Jacob M. Appel

I used to dream of true love; now I'm open to false, but convincing....

~ Jacob M. Appel

It is my opinion that enjoying yourself in the present and loosening your definition of time slows the aging process.

~ Frederick Dodson

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

~ J.m. Barrie

In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain.

~ Gabriel García Márquez

Arthur said, You must know that you don't love children for being good or bad. I know you know that.Why do you love them?Because you do, said Arthur. Because they don't know what's coming and maybe you do.

~ Jane Smiley

In the end, the slow decay of the body didn't matter. We all continue on, renewing ourselves, through our offspring. They are what matter. They are what survives.

~ Andy Lane

The joy of reading with our children doesn't stop as they, and we, get older; it simply changes.

~ Paul Kropp

Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny.Whether one would even consider turning to religion in advanced years has much to do with upbringing, which makes all the more important standing up to the presumptions of the religious in front of children. One would regard the Biblical events – a spontaneously igniting bush, a sea’s parting, human parthenogenesis, a resurrected prophet and so on – that supposedly heralded God’s intervention in our affairs as the stuff of fairy tales were it not for the credibility we unwittingly lend them by keeping quiet out of mistaken notions of propriety.

~ Jeffrey Tayler

MAGISTRATEDon't men grow old?LYSISTRATANot like women. When a man comes homeThough he's grey as grief he can always get a girl.There's no second spring for a woman. None.She can't recall it, nobody wants her, howeverShe squanders her time on the promise of oracles,It's no use...

~ Aristophanes

Health makes good propaganda.

~ Naomi Wolf

Laughter is a threat to aging.

~ Ashlecka Aumrivani

In childhood we inhabit a world of wonderful contrasts that later we often come to see as bizarre and do our best to rearrange, with everything in its 'proper' place. Unusual juxtapositions we label surrealistic. Yet what is surrealism but a second childhood with Freudian overtones which we have to be re-educated to enjoy? -- part of the tragedy of growing up

~ Ken Russell

Here's to another year and let's hope it's above ground.

~ Carol Shields

We start our sometimes tedious, sometimes exciting, often times sad and stressful march to the grave the moment we're born, so it might as well be a march worth remembering.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

Europe, the land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts. The land where the economy gets to stagger all over the continent.

~ Núria Añó

We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we become. None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.

~ B.j. Neblett

...I have decided that I shan't sweat the small stuff. Sense and sensibility will, I assume, come in their own time. If indeed they ought to come. And in the meantime, I shall continue to work my ass off... and whenever the opportunity arises... dance my ass off. ... As someone very smart once wrote, 'Those who were seen dancing were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music'.

~ Amy Mowafi

Never had anyone said, Listen. Life is short. Pretend your body is still in its twenties. Jump for the brass ring. Swing for those bleachers. Dive into the deep end of the pool. Act like a fool if you must, but at least *live*.

~ Cathie Pelletier

People undergo several sequential steps in maturing from infancy including childhood, adolescences, young adulthood, middle age, and old age. Each stage presents distinct challenges that require a person to amend how they think and act. The motive for seeking significant change in a person’s manner of perceiving the world and behaving vary. Alteration of person’s mindset can commence with a growing sense of awareness that a person is dissatisfied with an aspect of his or her life, which cause a person consciously to consider amending their lifestyle. The ego might resist change until a person’s level of discomfort becomes unbearable. A person can employ logic to overcome the ego’s defense mechanism and intentionally integrate needed revisions in a person’s obsolete or ineffective beliefs and behavior patterns. The subtle sense that something is amiss in a person’s life can lead to a gradual or quick alteration in a person’s conscious thoughts and outlook on life. Resisting change can prolong unhappiness whereas

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Without knowing why or how, I found myself in love with this strange Wanderess. Maybe I was just in love with the dream she was selling me: a life of destiny and fate; as my own life up until we met had been so void of enchantment. Those things: mystery, fate, enchantment... they are things that young people offer us as soon as we get close to them. And if we're not careful, we can be seduced by, and drawn back into, the youthful world they preside over.

~ Roman Payne

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.

~ Sophia Loren

She was an object lesson on the essential luck, whatever hardships may come their way, of those born able to make things.

~ Diana Athill

When Dr. Jung said we must be able to look forward in old age to the next day and to look forward to the great adventure that is ahead, he was making life’s “imperative to grow” personal. As long as we are alive, we must be able to dream of the future, of a better world or better ways of life. We are also invited by our greater Self to dream new dreams of creativity and fresh ways of expressing ourselves, as many great artists have into their nineties.

~ Bud Harris

Why do you paint, Nona?...'I paint first to honor God who paints the sunsets and oceans and human hearts. And second, I paint so I don't get cranky like so many of the old people in this world.

~ Kimberly Stuart