Quotes About Aging

Time is a thief. A killer. Time is killing him.

Our terminal decline into old age and death stems from the fine print of the contract that we signed with our mitochondria two billion years ago.

Your wrinkles either show that you're nasty, cranky, and senile, or that you're always smiling.

Wrinkles are engraved smiles.

As my mom always said, 'You'd rather have smile lines than frown lines.'

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.

I don't see my skin aging. I see my skin looking as good, or better, than it did ten years ago...and that makes me smile.

As we grow old, we become aware that death is drawing near; his shadow falls across our path; the realities of life seem less crude than of yore, they touch our senses less intimately, and they lose much of their poignancy.

To grow old means to be rid of anxieties about the past.

hoy, lo que da ganancias es la desenfrenada velocidad de circulación, reciclado, envejecimiento, descarte y reemplazo –no la durabilidad ni la duradera confiabilidad del producto–.

I used to lie in a lover's arms getting a stiff neck, or needing to scratch my nose, or losing all sensation in my arm, unwilling to move lest the man find out I wasn't comfortable in his embrace...Would Snow White have rested all eight pounds of her head on any part of the prince? I doubt it, and I never did either. Sarah says that is why elderly women have such prominent cords in their necks.

neurosis is for the young, who think they are made of time

I have been trying to remember being young, which is hard because I don't feel old until I try to get up from my chair. Or when I look at the photograph Jennifer took of me sitting on a stool next to her twins, and really, from the back, it looks as if I have an open umbrella concealed under my skirt. How did that happen? I think, but, oh well, I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now.

What I used to fear was growing old—not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good.

the last several years my life had begun to feel shapeless, like underwear with the elastic gone, the days down around my ankles.

My definition of fear is that it's a constant companion, a sidekick, riding you like a watch, going in and out of the days. I don't live like that anymore. The fact that I'm sixty-three has something to do with it. What I used to fear was growing old—not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good.

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

With mindfulness you can see the real owner of things. Do you think this is your world, your body? It is the world's world, the body's body. If you tell it, Don't get old, does the body listen? Does your stomach ask permission to get sick? We only rent this house; why not find out who really owns it?

Alles zerfällt im Augenblicke, wenn man nicht ein Dasein erschaffen hat, das über dem Sarge noch fortdauert. Um wen bei seinem Alter Söhne, Enkel und Urenkel stehen, der wird oft tausend Jahre alt.

Age hasn't matured you. It's made those traits that were ticks in the twenty-five-year-old into full-blown affectations in the thirty-eight-year-old.

Lia had mentioned staleness, and I wondered if this was it. Growing old in this town, with these women you've known your entire life, eating cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, and rehashing the same gossip week after week. As comfortable as I was in my routine, in my sameness, I could see how that might seem terrifying.

If you're lucky, and you're like me, you'll be old much longer than you are young, and you will enjoy the wisdom that comes from experience. But you have to plan for that. That's why it's important to find something you love to do.

And now I'm old. That bus is parked permanently. The battery is dead. And I can't remember where I put the jumper cables.

When you see an old lady who's on the wrong side of a good mood, now you know why. She has a past that you can't understand because you didn't live it. As she ages, her feet hurt, her back aches, her knees click, she cooks, she cleans, she worries, she waits, and then she gets sick and dies. Be kind, Anina. Someday you'll be the old lady.