Quotes About Aging

And that unconscious ease that comes of being so young — still oblivious to the blows that will destroy parts of her. Past the age of forty, everyone is like a bombed-out city.

I nearly weep. All I had ever wanted was that my mother be glad to be alive in my presence. I am still certain that if she had been, I'd have grown up whole inside. "Imagine," I say to Leonard. "She's so old and she can still do this to me." "It's not how old she is that's remarkable," he says. "It's how old you are.

Like so many aging college people, Pnin had long since ceased to notice the existence of students on the campus.

The twist in his lower back that was aggravated by lifting objects, or sneezing, or moving, or not moving. No one had ever told him that growing old would hurt so much.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep

One loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.

The Scholars "Bald heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love's despair To flatter beauty's ignorant ear. They'll cough in the ink to the world's end; Wear out the carpet with their shoes Earning respect; have no strange friend; If they have sinned nobody knows. Lord, what would they say Should their Catullus walk that way?

Oh, who could have foretold That the heart grows old?

I heard the old, old man say, "Everything alters, And one by one we drop away." They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like the old thorn trees By the waters. I heard the old, old man say, "All that is beautiful drifts away Like the waters.

IMITATED FROM THE JAPANESE A MOST astonishing thing — Seventy years have I lived; (Hurrah for the flowers of Spring, For Spring is here again.) Seventy years have I lived No ragged beggar-man, Seventy years have I lived, Seventy years man and boy, And never have I danced for joy.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep — W.B. Yeats, from "When You are Old," The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats . (Scribner; 2nd Revised edition September 9, 1996) Originally published 1889.

Bodily decrepitude is wisdom

An old man plays the bagpipes In a gold and silver wood; Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, Are dancing in a crowd.

The sense of smell, which seems to diminish as we grow older, until it becomes something scarcely worthy of being called a sense, is nearly as keen in little children as in the inferior animals, and, when they live with nature, contributes as much to their pleasure as sight or hearing.

I am more than a little jealous that the wonder I am party to has been sprinkled over Salinger's gray head.

As you get older, every chance to win a championship is more crucial, because you are going to have less and less of them.

I just hope I'm never promoted to the level of my incontinence.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.

You'll find as you grow older that you weren't born such a great while ago after all. The time shortens up.

The real evidence of growing older is that things level off in importance.

Your confidence grows as you get older, particularly when you're in a loving relationship. Everything strengthens.