Aging Quotes

She re-marked her lips with her lipstick. I saw sprays of silver in her coarse hair. I saw inscriptions of her years around her mouth, a solid crease between her brows from a lifetime of cynicism. The posture of a woman who had stood in a casual spotlight in every room she'd ever been in, not for gloss or perfection, for self-possession. Everything she touched she added an apostrophe to.

~ Stephanie Danler

To a man and woman, all of her elderly patients had been surprised to be old - which Avery privately regarded as a serious failure to pay attention.

~ Lionel Shriver

I am afraid that as people grow old there is a tendency for them to believe that what the past *ought* to have been it was.

~ Gore Vidal

In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearance, as less like a human being.

~ Anthony Powell

One’s capacity for hearing about ghastly doings lessens with age.

~ Anthony Powell

At eight-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world by a few slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change of position while he slept, and if he did all he could to keep those threads intact, it was because of his terror of not finding God in the darkness of death.

~ Gabriel García Márquez

Il arrive un âge où ils ne sont plus séduisants, ni «en forme», comme on dit. Ils ne peuvent plus boire et ils pensent encore aux femmes; seulement ils sont obligés de les payer, d'accepter des quantités de petites compromissions pour échapper à leur solitude. Ils sont bernés, malheureux. C'est ce moment qu'ils choisissent pour devenir sentimentaux et exigeants… J'en ai vu beaucoup devenir ainsi des sortes d'épaves. A time comes when they are no longer attractive or in good form. They can't drink any more, and they still hanker after women, only then they have to pay and make compromises in order to escape from their loneliness: they have become just figures of fun. They grow sentimental and hard to please. I haveseen many who have gone the same way.

~ Françoise Sagan

Old age teaches you in a very unkind way that things won’t necessarily get better. Not in this life. In fact, you can pretty much count on things degenerating. Being content is not a lack of ambition. It’s being able to rest and relax and know that your worth doesn’t come from what others think of you or even what you think of you.

~ Chris Fabry

I want that person you knew to return. But the truth is, this may be the best we achieve. Today, having her here and comfortable and not agitated…that may be as good as we get. Are you okay with that?

~ Chris Fabry

...is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying?

~ Gore Vidal

Old age is having the name of a chiropractor in your wallet. It's cutting out coupons for the zeal of discounted small items and the practice of fine motor skills.

~ Dominic Smith

The only way that getting older can be a bad thing is if you are not fully living in the moment now.

~ Andrena Sawyer

As I've gotten older, I have taught myself to act normal. I can do it well enough to fool the average person for a whole evening, maybe longer. But it all falls apart if I hear something that elicits a strong emotional reaction from me that is different from what people expect. In an instant, in their eyes, I turn into the sociopathic killer I was believed to be forty years ago.

~ John Elder Robison

A youth is susceptible to the influence of idealist notions. As a person ages, they notice a gap between their expectations and reality and they grow more pessimistic about the world and their ability to live up to the lofty notions that inspired a younger self.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I thought getting old meant getting wise. Or at least secure. I don't know why I thought that; I don't know any wise, secure old people. Maybe I inferred it from after-school specials. And I'd like to think by the time you die, you've figured something out. That you aren't lying there wondering what the hell just happened.

~ Kristin Hersh

These wrinkles are the hands of time,The journeys I’ve been onThey’ve seen me through a thousand days,And ev’ry victory wonThese fragile hands, With exposed bones,Are not a fearful sightBut rather, they, my faithful partners,Rocked babies through the nightThese eyes are weak, They see much less,Than yours they’ve seen much moreThey’ve guided me through birth, through death,Through grief, through hurt, through warThese ears can hear so very little,Yet they’ve learned to listen muchThey perk up not for gossip now,But for a heart to touchThose younger often look my way,With pity looks to giveYet this old body doesn’t mean I am dying,But rather, that I have lived

~ Emily Nelson

Blessing Number One. Thank you for getting old because it means you are getting to live.

~ Janet Turpin Myers

To continue what one had been doing -- which was Dante's idea of hell -- is, I came to see, and the vision frightened me, easy in one's sixties.

~ Carolyn G. Heilbrun

Growing old is a pathetic thing. It is full of limitations and reduction. It happens to us all, I know; but I think that it might not have to. I think it happens to those of us who request it. And in our current mind-set, our collective ennui, it is what we have chosen to do. But one day a mutant child will be born who refuses to age, who refuses to acknowledge the limitations of these bodies of ours, who lives in health until he is done with life, not until his body no longer supports him. He will live for hundreds of years, like Noah. Like Moses. This child's genes will be passed to his offspring, and more like him will follow. And their genetic makeup will supplant the genes of those of us who need to grow old and decay before we die. I believe that one day it will come to pass; however, such a world is beyond my purview.

~ Garth Stein

As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they inevitably face an increasingly nagging question: Is this all there is? Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing; most people, expect that in adulthood things will get better. During the early years of adulthood the future still looks promising. But inevitably the mirror' shows the first white hairs and confirms the fact that those few extra pounds are not about to leave; eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains begin to shoot through the body...' Where's all that money I was to have made? Where are all of the good times I was going to have?

~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

As you get older you strip away the things you don't have time for, and then you are left with only the things you have time for. Your life gets skinnier and skinnier until you wonder why you go on. You go on because there are things that must get done. You become no longer a person so much as a place, an unfunny place where things come to get done.

~ Jonathan Goldstein

A few years turned into more years, and more years turned into all years. Years have a habit of behaving like that.

~ Fredrik Backman

An explanation of an old man’s mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they what it was to be young… and I seem to have forgotten lately…

~ J.k. Rowling

Although generally our sight diminishes with age; I submit that our vision improves. The older we get, the more clearly we see our life’s decisions played out to their logical conclusions.

~ David C. Maloney

In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained.

~ Anne Lamott

We watch our bodies and our brains slow down as younger bodies and brains zip past us, and we just accept it, not realizing there is a whole world offering to sharpen and improve us. We simply need to look for it.

~ Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Nursing homes and rest homes are all the rage round here. Most of us will be in them before very long. Do you fancy that? Are you looking forward to it? No, neither am I. But I'm doing something about that. Just whisky and cigarettes, so far, mostly.

~ Andrew Davies

Do not resent growing old, many are denied the privilege.

~ Irish Proverb

our dispassionate acceptance of attrition...[can] be matched by a full use of everything that has ever happened in all the long wonderful-ghastly years to free a person's mind from his body.

~ M.f.k. Fisher

Longevity is highly over rated.

~ Martin Kimeldorf

My mother and I looked at each other then, full in the face, more frankly than we'd done since I was small. I realized with a jolt that I was taller than she was by at least half a foot. When on earth had that happened? The realization made me want to sit down on the stairs and cry. It seemed to signify something terrible about the world: something that couldn't - or mustn't- be put into words. And I could see, looking down into her startled, anxious face, that my mother felt exactly the same way.

~ John Wray

Recognising clichés is a sign of aging.

~ Indu Muralidharan

Time is a curious thing. When you have it before you, it's something you take for granted and it moves slowly. Then, as you get older, it accelerates. When I look back, it seems such a long distance travelled, so long ago, so dream-like.

~ Bernard Sumner

You always thought older people were wiser. It's not that. It's just that our relatives are dead and we're able to speak freely.

~ Ariel Gore

So why aren’t more marketing companies targeting our age group? Why are there so many youth-oriented programs and advertisements on television today? Why are we being ignored? Don’t companies realize they are missing a huge market?Now granted, a visit to the local mall will show you there are a lot of teenagers hanging out there these days. But are they shopping? Are they spending money? No. They’re “hanging.” Contrary to what our skin might be doing, we members of the over-forty crowd don’t “hang.” We shop, and not just window shop either. We’re serious buyers. When we pick up an item and turn it over to see the price, we often carry it right on over to the checkout counter and pay for it. Why? Because we know the energy involved with picking up items. We don’t do it unless we’re committed.

~ Martha Bolton

It occurred to Jeff that he had entered the vague phase of his life. He had a vague idea of things, a vague sense of what was happening in the world, a vague sense of having met someone before. It was like being vaguely drunk all the time.

~ Geoff Dyer

Was the dementia of old age a blessing in disguise? No more thoughts. No more damage inflicted. No more memories of damage survived.

~ Janet Turpin Myers

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.

~ Seneca

He couldn't be more than forty-five, but Murray Miles was stooped, old before his time. The mountains of Alberta had the ability to bend those who lived here.That, or it broke them.

~ Danika Stone

Aging is harder for beautiful people, and Anna was beautiful.

~ Marina Keegan