Aging Quotes

For after all we make our faces as we go along...

The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much.

The key to successful aging is to pay as little attention to it as possible.

I Didn't Ask to Be a Senior Citizen (I Was Drafted)

I'm getting old, thought Eileen Calder. Old and worn out and cynical. And being cynical is a lot worse than being old or worn out.

90/93-year-old Jacob wonders as he gazes at his aged reflection, 'When did I stop being me?

The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.

There comes a time in every Salome's life when she should no longer be dropping the last veil.

It paid barely a living wage, but he stayed with it—gradually and in the end gratefully arriving at the point in life when you understand there are no great changes ahead.

I have to start loving what comes next and stop hating I won't be a part of it.

One of the many problems with aging is that you begin to think of yourself as a slob because your birthday suit can never be cleaned or pressed no matter how spotted or wrinkled it gets

More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years.

...our familiar features rinsed in weird adulthood.

this one-way rocket to Death in Adulthood" "Normal Time" in New California Writing

I think: by the time I'm old, nobody will be able to die any more.

But now I remember, of course, I'm never going to be old.

How did I go from being the maiden in a fairy tale to a wretched old maids so quickly? It happened almost without my realizing it...

I remember a new heaviness in my body, but maybe that's the work of time and my looking back.

Charlotte views her younger selves with a certain detachment. They are herself, but other incarnations, innocents going about half-forgotten business.

We are no longer awkward younglings. Our enemies may be fearsome, but so are we. It is time we remind them of that.

Know this: even if you’re like us and still doddering around above ground, someone out there from your past is probably pretty sure that you’re dead by now. (p.125 )

After a while, just staying alive becomes a full-time job. No wonder we need a vacation.

Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways.

Old age robs you of every last illusion, even the belief in your own goodness.

..why sit on the sidelines of life at any age?

Time only goes in that one direction.

The worst thing about getting older is you discover that most of the performers in the shows you used to watch are now younger than you. Suddenly, everything become less believable.

I'm just at the age when time speeds up in an odd way. Do you know what I mean? The winters come closer together and you learn to accept that you're not special anymore.

The more steps you take towards the end, the fewer steps you have to take towards the end!

I paid bills and bought groceries and got my eyes checked while the days crumbled away like debris from a cliff face. Life a continuous backing away from the edge.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Longevity is highly over rated.

Recognising clichés is a sign of aging.

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.

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

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.

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

My features have blunted with the passage of time, my reflection only faintly resembles how I see myself. Gravity demands payback for the years my body has resisted it.

My countenance in my old-age does injustice to my heart. John Quincy Adams

I feel as if I am being left out, as though I’m some straggler and people can’t quite remember to stay back for me.

the real essence of our lifetime lies in the time of our lives