Quotes About Aging

Don't ask why if you don't want to die. Do as you're told if you want to get old.

The mother at thirty with face commencing to display the faint seams of the plan for the second face life had in store for her and which she feared would be her own mother's

Something happens to a novel as it ages, but what? It doesn't ripen or deepen in the manner of cheese and wine, and it doesn't fall apart, at least not figuratively. Fiction has no half-life. We age alongside the novels we've read, and only one of us is actively deteriorating. Which is to say that a novel is perishable only by virtue of being stored in such a leaky cask: our heads.

I'm just afraid of having a tombstone that says HERE LIES A PROMISING OLD MAN.

we get old like animals. We get claws, the shape of our face is the shape of our skull, our lips retreat back from big teeth like we're baring to snarl. Sharp, snarling, old: who should wonder at how nobody cares if I hurt, except another snarler?

Though my hair has grown grey now, and my sight dim, and my heart cold with years, and ennui, and disappointment, and treachery of friends, and yet I have but to lean back in my arm-chair and think, and those sweet figures comes rising up before me out of the past, with their smiles, and their kindnesses, and their bright tender eyes!

Mi sueño es agitado. Mis nervios están desquiciados. Mi piel está seca. Mi cabello cae. Mis ojos están apagados. Las uñas de mis manos y mis pies están quebradizas. Estoy envejeciendo. Comienzo a no encontrar gusto en cosa alguna. Empiezo a aburrirme de las cosas buenas, como me aburro de las malas. Estoy muriendo. Estoy muriendo y no tengo hijos.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last, And careful hours with Time's deformed hand Have written strange defeatures in my face. But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?

No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck So many blows upon this face of mine And made no deeper wounds?

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. -Sonnet 73

A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow. But a good heart...is the sun and moon...for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly.

Last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion. I am sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

And then he drew a dial from his poke, And looking with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock: Thus we may see', Quoth he, 'how the world wags: 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, And after one hour more 'twill be eleven; And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot.

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager Long withering out a young man revenue.

Age, thou hast lost thy labor.

He that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses, whose fair flower, Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.

Yes, and shall do till the pangs of death shake him. Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.

Slanders, sir. For the satirical rogue says here that old men have gray beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams—all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

She thought of death and of her own in particular: the death of her body and the death of her face.

Instead this room which had seen her grow to maturity would see her dry up and fade. The gilt mirror in the corner would bear its dispassionate testimony. All these ornaments and furnishings would be her companions through the years to come. And she realised that she would come to hate them, if she didn't already hate them, as one hates the witnesses of one's humiliation and futility.

Invece adesso quella stanza, che l'aveva vista diventare adulta, l'avrebbe anche vista avvizzire e sbiadire.

Ross?» «Sì, fiorellino?» «Ancora fiorellino» disse lei. «Stasera sono stata un bocciolo e un fiorellino. Spero che tra qualche anno non comincino a chiamarmi baccello.» Lui rise a bassa voce ma a lungo.