Quotes About Aging

The maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish his powers as a mill. He had been without them for so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an acquisition. Indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a straight line—less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.

They sat in a row on the couches and in wheelchairs listening to the radio, their faded eyes fixed on the fish or on nothing or something they saw a long time ago. Francis would always remember the shuffle of feet on linoleum in the hot and buzzing day, and the smell of stewed tomatoes and cabbage from the kitchen, the smell of old people like meat wrappers dried in the sun, and always the radio.

Mrs. Rule wants to be free of financial worry before her sixty-fifth birthday. Each time she tabulates, she tells herself she is reducing her fear of never being able to retire in comfort.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

Il vivait vite comme un mécanisme d'horloge qui se défend, il franchissait au galop les âges qu'il ne lui était pas accordé d'atteindre dans le temps, et durant les dernières vingt-quatre heures, il devint un vieillard.

De même qu'un aliment non digéré ne fortifie pas un homme, de même le temps que l'on a passé à attendre ne le vieillit pas.

la conciencia del paso del tiempo, que, ante la monotonía ininterrumpida, corre el riesgo de perderse y que está tan estrechamente emparentada y ligada a la conciencia de la vida que, cuando la una se debilita, es inevitable que la otra sufra también un considerable debilitamiento. Se

It seemed to him [Otto Kugelblitz] obvious that the human life span runs through the varieties of mental disorder as understood in his day—the solipsism of infancy, the sexual hysterias of adolescence and entry-level adulthood, the paranoia of middle age, the dementia of late life ... all working up to death, which at last turns out to be sanity.

One by one they are being picked off around him: in his small circle of colleagues the ratio slowly grows top-heavy, more ghosts, more each winter, and fewer living... and with each one, he thinks he feels patterns on his cortex going dark, settling to sleep forever, parts of whoever he's been losing all definition, reverting to dumb chemistry...

Nothing like perpetual litigation to age a man before his time.

Elle faisait confiance à la vie pour lui envoyer des indices, des idées, des détails qu'elle convertirait en histoires. C'est comme ça qu'elle avait écrit son premier livre. En ouvrant grand les yeux sur le monde. En écoutant, en observant, en reniflant. C'est comme ça aussi qu'on ne vieillit pas. On vieillit quand on s'enferme, on refuse de voir, d'entendre ou de respirer. La vie et l'écriture, ça va souvent ensemble.

Trees are the arbiters of time, gathering up the hours and days and years, keeping them in their circular rings. They know that forgetting is not so easy. The blackjacks, the water oaks, the sumacs, they all had time to spare, and more.

many people underestimate the ongoing impact of ADHD among older adults,

primary tasks is just to keep ourselves going as we age.

Most of the time I go around feeling like an old man on roller skates.

Aging does that; it makes you amenable to far more ambiguous feelings and opinions than the inflexible black-and-white thinking of youth.

What a shock it had been when she began to grow invisible to men and they no longer registered her. How humiliating to discover time had abducted her favorite version of herself and replaced it with a saggy middle-aged woman instead.

Age Doesn't Matter Unless You're a Cheese

Hey!" I said, indignation filling me. "I'm immortal! Doesn't that mean I won't get saggy boobs and gray hair? Because if it doesn't mean that, I want a refund—

I want to hold on tight to everything and everyone I cherished and, at the same time, saw in a way I never had before that living on this earth, growing older, and growing up in the true sense of the word is really about learning how to let go.

The old get old because they pulled off a miracle and didn't let life kill them. That takes strength, persistence, commitment, and you should respect that.

The modest wrinkles and the slackness of her skin were a matter of course. Proof she'd seized the reins in life. Nothing to be ashamed of.

He was getting to be a certain age, he thought. It was the age when his never-to-be-written masterpieces had begun to outweigh the masterpieces he was still going to write.

She introduced herself to me as Ray's wife. I was only mildly surprised to realize that Ray had this pleasant-looking matron for a partner, a little glassy-eyed, tagged by forty years of marriage like a dead deer on a car roof.