Ageing Quotes

An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress

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.

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.

Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed ... Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.

To all, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love.

He looked up at her. Age and worry had taken their toll on her frail body, but she was kind and beautiful. And for a moment, memories and thoughts swam to the surface, the world coming into utter clarity. And all of them revolved around Amanda, his wife of fifty years.

If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.

Parents raise children then grow old, and their children forget the things their old parents did for them, because their brains don’t remember before they grew selfish.There are buildings all over the world full of old people sitting around looking out of windows, full of hate for their selfish sons and daughters.And meanwhile, the selfish sons and daughters look out of their windows at their children playing and think how wonderful their unbreakable bond of love is between them and their children.

Among the worst things about growing old is the loss of those irreplaceable friends who added richness and depth to your life.

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.

What do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this? Do they somehow supposeIt's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't rememberWho called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,They could alter things back to when they danced all night,Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?Or do they fancy there's really been no change,And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,Or sat through days of thin continuous dreamingWatching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;tttWhy aren't they screaming?

... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present.

Once you start recognizing your own obsessions, you know you’re getting old.

Unattached and aimless, these old men are always infatuated with little certainties and regularities such as those that ordered the life of Mr. Krupper as seen from outside. Habit is living. Anything unexpected reminds them of death.("Hard Candy")

In any case the friendships of later life, in contrast wih those negotiated before thirty, are apt to be burdened with reservations, constraints, inhibitions.

Doesn't seem quite real. It's not meaningful. I can't quite imagine myself being 73. That's the age my father was! [Laughter.] How can I be his age? It's weird.

Passion + Vision +Skill + Mentoring = Success.

These wrinkles are nothingThese gray hairs are nothing,This stomach which sagswith old food, these bruisedand swollen ankles, my darkening brain,they are nothing.I am the same boymy mother used to kiss.

Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.

Matched with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

Time is a function of memory; what does not pass through a smile flies away through dark. Celebrating passing time applies to the successful ones. Cheer on your birthday, you're among the lucky ones.

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.

Would you still read me when I become a blank page.

Self-observation is simply the observation of an internal state and an external event. It is pure awareness, which gives one the ability to choose one's actions. Only by having the choice can one perform what is right.

Even when you don't see old age coming, you can wave it goodbye

New landscapes, new customs. The accumulation of memories. A long life is not a question of years. A man without memories might reach the age of a hundred and feel that his life had been a very brief one.

You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.

But here we call it Spring, when a young man’s fancy turns,fitfully, lightly, to idling in the sun,to touching in the dark. And the old man's?To worms in their garden box; stepping asidea moment in a poem that will remember,fitfully, who made it and the discordand stammer, and change of heart and catch of breathit sprang from. A bending downlightly to touch the earth.

You're never too old to be young.

Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.

I know I do everything. I've been doing everything for an awfully long time, and I've seen and lived as hard as I could, and it's been unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable. But now I have the feeling everything is gliding away from me, and I don't remember, and I don't care, and yet now is right when I need it.

Because I’ve gotten older, I worry that there will be a steep decline in my talent, but I promise not to let the same thing happen to my passion for writing.