Quotes About Aging

Old age was a box of surprises and not the good kind.

Time brings all things to pass.

Time refines all things that age with time.

Time in his aging overtakes all things alike.

Time in its aging course teaches all things.

We are the old, dishonoured ones, the broken husks of men. Even then they cast us off, the rescue mission left us here to prop a child's strength upon a stick. What if the new sap rises in his chest? He has no soldiery in him, no more than we, and we are the aged past ageing, gloss of the leaf shrivelled, three legs at a time we falter on. Old men are children once again, a dream that sways and wavers into the hard light of day.

I heard the incessant dissolving of silk I felt my heart growing so old in real time

An old man with overalls walked by; I don't think old people should wear overalls; it makes them look like shrivelly toddlers.

Our bodies smell, ache, sag, pulse, throb and age. They force us to fart and burp, and to abandon sensible plans in order to lie in bed with people, sweating and letting out intense sounds reminiscent of coyotes calling out to one another across the barren wastes of the American deserts. Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.

How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young or slender. 'Thank God!' we say,' those illusions are gone.' Everything added to the self is a burden as well as a pride.

If we wanted to think about it,' wrote Proust, 'perhaps there is no really loving mother who could not, on her dying day, and often long before, address this reproach to her son. The truth is that as we grow older we kill all those who love us by the cares we give them, by the anxious tenderness we inspire in them and constantly arouse.

Aging is a bit like looking tired, but in a way that no amount of sleep will repair.

At eighty, things do not occur; they recur.

Usually a senile old fool knows when to retire. But sometimes he simply needs to be retired.

Our conception of immortality now requires precise definition. What must be eliminated from the human situation is the inevitability of death as a result and natural end of the aging process. I am speaking of the inescapable parabolic arching from birth to death. But we must clearly understand that any given unit of life -- my individual existence and yours -- can never be guaranteed eternity.

I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.

Ahogy öregszel, más színben látsz majd mindent. A nagy dolgok valahogy eltörpülnek. Végül egyszer?en lemosod magadról az ilyen emlékeket.

I looked at this man. He was in his fifties, mostly bones inside his black suit, and gave off an odour, if you were as close up to him as I was, of a long-closed keyboard opened suddenly in an empty house. (73)

There are three things I noticed about being thirty-three: Failing memory, hair loss and failing memory.

The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood, until the time comes for them to depart this life, again like children, neither tired of living nor aware of death.

I am not sure that digging in our past guilts is a useful occupation for the very old, given that one can do so little about them. I have reached a stage at which one hopes to be forgiven for concentrating on how to get through the present.

Dwindling energy is one of the most boring things about being old. From time to time you get a day when it seems to be restored, and you can't help feeling that you are 'back to normal', but it never lasts. You just have to resign yourself to doing less--or rather, taking more breaks than you used to in whatever you are doing. In my case I fear that what I most often do less of is my duty towards my companion rather than indulgence of my private inclinations.

All through my sixties I felt I was still within hailing distance of middle age, not safe on its shores, perhaps, but navigating its coastal waters. My seventieth birthday failed to change this because I managed scarcely to notice it, but my seventy-first did change it. Being 'over seventy' is being old: suddenly I was aground on that fact and saw that the time had come to size it up.

Tony ran an impatient hand through what was left of his graying hair and pushed up the half glasses that stubbornly refused to park on the bridge of his nose. Sure, Natalie Daniels was good.