Quotes About Midlife

Book contains: three very strong women in their forties who aren't letting themselves be defined by middle age, paranormal phenomenon (psychics, ghosts, magic, etc), romance with sexy times (moderate, not OMG I have to read through my fingers), mildly strong language, and all the fear and excitement of taking a second chance at life. These ladies are doing midlife right!

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it.

I just came home one day and, in a midlife-crisis sort of way, I told my wife, 'I'm going to run a marathon,' not really understanding what that was. Then I just kind of got into it, and now that I have been running pretty consistently over the past few years, I don't know if it's because I love it or because I hate myself. I just really enjoy it.

As we reach midlife, we are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to pursue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties.

Because the 40s, as writer Barbara Fried so succinctly captures them, are a time when it seems no matter what course one has pursued, "everything is turning gray, drying up or leaving home.

And somewhere between the late thirties and early forties when we enter midlife, we also have the opportunity for true adulthood, whereupon we proceed either to wither inside our husks or to regather and re-pot ourselves for the flowering into our full authenticity.

As men and women enter midlife, the tables begin to turn. Many men I interviewed found themselves wanting to learn how to be responsive.

You can't take everything with you when you leave on the midlife journey. You are moving away. Away from institutional claims and other people's agenda. Away from external valuations and accreditations, in search of an inner validation. You are moving out of roles and into the self.

When a man gets to middle age shouldn't he look for a peaceful and stable existence, find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position, become a husband and a father, set up a comfortable home, put money in the bank and add to it every month so there'll be something for old age and a little left over for the next generation?

Is he about to become that man, that modern fool of a certain age, who finds himself pausing by shop windows to stare in at the saxophones or the motorbikes, or driven to find himself a mistress of his daughter's age?

One of the shocks of a 50th birthday is realizing the fundamental fact that your youth is irrevocably over.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

Midlife is a time of explosive change, when our hormones rampage and our bodies alter, forcing us into a whole new chapter of life whether we want it or not. Everyone has a moment when they realise for sure that this so-called passage of time is changing them - and perhaps not in a good way.

There's no socially acceptable middle age.

Wine? said Zoe. At two in the afternoon? I've decided to become an alcoholic. Just for the duration of my middle years. She filled a glass and rested it on the edge of the washbasin. That's yours.

He got out in a middle-aged kind of way, locked the car, and ambled along.

When you're in your 40s, you become more conscious of life being of limited duration and that you need to create memories and go on little adventures from time to time.

I think a lot of athletes when they get in their mid and late 30s, they focus more on kids, on family.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

When we cross the threshold of our fiftieth year we see ourselves as base and spineless, I thought, the question is how long we can stand this condition.

It's not Life that begans at forty, it's Death - Victoria

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

The time is a critical one, for it marks the beginning of the second half of life, when a metanoia, a mental transformation, not infrequently occurs. (on being 36 yrs old)

I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'