Quotes About Aging

Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?

You have to start by changing the story you tell yourself about getting older... The minute you say to yourself, 'Time is everything, and I'm going to make sure that time is used the way I dream it should be used,' then you've got a whole different story.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL. Earl

il tempo è fuggito tanto velocemente che l'animo non è riuscito ad invecchiare.

Peu à peu, ils ont pris l'habitude d'être au fort, ils y sont restés emprisonnés, ils n'ont plus été capables d'en bouger. Vieux à trente ans, en fait.

Da qualche tempo infatti un'ansia, che lui non sapeva capire, lo inseguiva senza riposo: l'impressione di non fare in tempo, che qualche cosa di importante sarebbe successo e l'avrebbe colto di sorpresa. [...] Di giorno in giorno Drogo rimandava la decisione, si sentiva del resto ancora giovane, appena venticinque anni. Quell'ansia sottile lo inseguiva tuttavia senza riposo, [...].

A una certa età tutti voi, uomini, cambiate. Non rimane più niente di quello che eravate da piccoli. Diventate irriconoscibili. Anche tu colonnello, un giorno, dovevi essere diverso...

Growing old is just a matter of throwing life away back; so you finally forgive even those that you have not begun to forget. It is that indifference which gives you your courage, which to tell the truth is no courage at all.

Ich dachte (...) an die beiden alten Männer, die einander rasierten, während die Welt sich weiter drehte, denn schließlich und endlich wird das Männerhaar trotz Friedensvertrag und Kampf um die Vormacht in Irland weiterwachsen.

She was broad and tall, and though her skin was the skin of a child, there could be seen coming, early in her life, the design that was to be the weather-beaten grain of her face, that wood in the work; the tree coming forward in her, an undocumented record of time.

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.

Time was a dry wind brushing away his youth and his strength.

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.

Behavior that was cute when you were in your twenties becomes aggravating in your thirties, pathetic in your forties and tragic in your fifties.

Old men, he thinks, take their fading pleasures where they can.

And the tuberculosis old men At the Nelson wheeze and cough And someone will head south Until this whole thing cools off … —Tom Waits, "Small Change

Life's like a fat orange, Frank thinks. When you're young, you squeeze it hard and fast, trying to get all the juice in a hurry. When you're older, you squeeze it slowly, savoring every drop. Because, one, you don't know how many drops you have left, and, two, the last drops are the sweetest.

These days most old people die in profit-making expiration dormitories. Their loving sons and daughters are busy and don't want to forgo the routine of their lives.

In your eighties you are invisible. Nearing ninety you hope no one sees you.

Kate never had any money, but she loved to save it. When she was ninety-three her youngest daughter took her to a dollar store where she found an elevated tray filled with tiny aluminum percolators, one-cuppers. The frank and ethical enterprise attached a notice informing its customers that these percolators did not work. They were only 5 cents, so Kate bought two of them anyway.

She said that one of the advantages of being ninety was that she could read a detective story again, only two weeks after she first read it, without any notion of which character was the villain.

I feel the circles grow smaller, and old age is a ceremony of losses, which is on the whole preferable to dying at forty-seven or fifty-two.

Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to.