Quotes About Aging

Toda saudade é uma espécie de velhice

Those who lament the dissolution of the American family-kids with no way to get to Girl Scouts, aging parents put into nursing homes-should remember what it was that kept the American family together: women's blood.

The body is like a car: the older you become the more care you have to take care of it - and you don't leave a Ferrari out in the sun.

Treat your neck the same way you do your face. It's a delicate area, and the first to betray age.

Life is not about age, about the length of years we manage to eke out of it. It is about aging, about living into the values offered in every stage of life. As E. M. Forster wrote, "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

This compulsion to look back, to explain to myself, to others, why I did what I did—or, worse, to justify why I didn't do something else—is one of the most direct roads to depression we have. Our thoughts, emotions, and attitudes, according to Dr. Andrew Weil in his book Healthy Aging, are "key determinants of how we age." They can threaten the quality of time we bring to the present.

When you grow as old as I am you can't any longer say this was someone's fault, and that was someone else's. It isn't so clear when you take a long view. Blame seems to lie everywhere. Or nowhere. Who can say where unhappiness begins?

Growing old is something no one can change. It happens to everyone, rich or poor. All the money in the world can't keep yer young. But it's the way yer grow old that makes the difference. Some people give up the ghost in their fifties and sixties, while others grow old gracefully. And

I just yesterday returned from a trip where I photographed a woman with two children whom I photographed first when she was the age of the older of the two children.

I just wanted to see if... we were okay," she said, feeling relief. "Just to make sure we can be friends. I don't want it to be weird, you know?" Friends? Different parts of Birdie died as she said it. It was like stars exploding and burning one by one. She wondered if this was part of getting older. Parts of your heart exploded and died.

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

The changes we swear to fight off with savage claws in our twenties end up creeping over us like a rising tide in our thirties.

It's one of the perks of aging, I suppose—an eagerness to release the baggage that doesn't serve you. I know this goes against common wisdom; our therapy-obsessed culture seems to think old wounds must be reopened before they can heal. I'm not sure I agree.

What a place. Glokta stifled a smile. It reminds me of myself, in a way. We both were magnificent once, and we both have our best days far behind us.

One day you're something, so promising and full o' dares, so big the world's too small a place to hold you. Then, 'fore you know it, you're old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you'll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.

Inside every seventy-year-old is a thirty-five-year-old asking, 'What happened?

The boys had grown since I'd last seen them. I wouldn't have recognized them in a group, but I find that the older I get, the more kids just look like kids. I don't really notice them as much as I used to. On the other hand, I could have instantly picked Harry out of a lineup of similarly marked German shepherds, were there ever a need to do so. Harry was a wonderful character. The boys were just boys.

Heroin offers safety, and the illusion of immortality, but it robs you of the possibilities that make holding onto life worthwhile in the first place. And since death will take us all, addicts and never-addicts and former addicts and future addicts, writing about heroin suggests that while we are here, we ought to live, which means, alas, that we allow ourselves to age and to die.

When an old person dies," Kent said, "even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They're like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.

Edward wasn't supposed to leave Jordan, though. They were meant to age together. That loss continues to be spiked with pain; it will never be soothed. And he can see, objectively, that Shay's life without him would have been woven with different moments, friends or lack of friends, different fights with Besa, different books and different struggles.

He knows the loss of Jordan will remain with him forever, even as Edward slowly leaves his parents behind. He was supposed to grow up and leave his mom and dad, after all, just like he will leave John and Lacey in the fall when he goes to college. That is part of the natural order. Edward wasn't supposed to leave Jordan, though. They were meant to age together. That loss continues to be spiked with pain; it will never be soothed.

When an old person dies," Kent said, "even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They're like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked

Too bad there isn't a special paint that couldn't be used on aging humans to fix them right.

When a woman's face is wrinkled And her hairs are sprinkled, With gray, Lackaday! Aside she's cast, No one respect will pay; Remember, Lasses, remember. And while the sun shines make hay: You must not expect in December, The flowers you gathered in May.