Quotes About Aging

Seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.

My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places I used to play. And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on. I'm just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.

Who could have foretold the heart grows old from touching others

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.

I pray for courage I pray for courage Now I'm old To greet the sickness And the cold I pray for courage In the night To bear the burden Make it light I pray for courage In the time When suffering comes and Starts to climb I pray for courage At the end To see death coming As a friend

Me gustan los viejos: no es una diarrea sentimental, como diría ese barbarote de Samuel Tesler. Los viejos me gustan como las flores marchitas, los frutos pasados, los otoños y los anocheceres, las cosas en trance final y en víspera de metamorfosis

Grandchildren are the dessert course of life, or, as Steve Leber, who founded Grandparents.com, told me, "God gave us grandchildren to make up for aging." Ain't it the truth.

They say weight training is good for you and helps you be healthier. Not hard to do, given the older I get, the more years I carry.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.

Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure.

The world's oldest woman passed away at 116. They keep dying. I think that title may be cursed.

Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.

We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.

Up through around twenty-five he'd never even thought about his back: it was a balanced, frictionless, self-regulating system. Now it felt like a busted gearbox into which somebody had chucked a handful of sand.

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.

At first blush this thought might seem depressing, but the process of transformation—aging and its accomplishments—can be very positive, with new possibilities, fresh beginnings, a wealth of appreciation, and a depth of gratitude that profoundly affects how our lives proceed.

Regret and celebration are equally important facets of aging. Throughout this book, these two aspects will appear in various guises and voices. That was the case with

Not surprisingly, physical exercise and diet are key to healthy aging; the research proves that beyond any doubt. But serving others, maintaining healthy relationships, being in nature, and having an active spiritual life—topics central to this book—are equally important. Inner and outer aging are close partners. Until we can find the inner enjoyment of which Suzuki spoke, exercise and diet alone will not suffice to make us content.

The answer, I propose, is that aging is an ideal time for the cultivation of the inner life: a time for spiritual practice. Why

Aging is beyond our control, but how we age is up to us.

The life expectancy at the turn of the century was forty-five; now it is eighty. Living into one's eighties, nineties, and even past one hundred is a real possibility today, one that makes your fifties and sixties a time not for winding down but for gearing up—though for what, we may not be sure.

The answer, I propose, is that aging is an ideal time for the cultivation of the inner life: a time for spiritual practice.