Ageing

"Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative."

"A man is as old as he's feeling, a woman is as old as she looks."

"They say that getting old is a curse, But not getting older is worse."

"At times it seems to me that I am living my life backwards, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin. My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing."

"To an old man any place that's warm is homeland."

"Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full-grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph. But socially useless. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work. And the process was an all-or-nothing one; either you failed to modify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They were still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six. So far without success. Mr. Foster sighed and shook his head."

"Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal."

"This increase in the life span and in the number of our senior citizens presents this Nation with increased opportunities: the opportunity to draw upon their skill and sagacity—and the opportunity to provide the respect and recognition they have earned. It is not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years to life—our objective must also be to add new life to those years."

"Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and having people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name."

"I've changed my attitudes about what it means to age. Sometimes people decide it's their lot in life to be old, but people like Grandma bring color and excellence to their lives. That's what I've tried to do, too. I'm looking forward to the next stage."

"Sometimes people grieve when they find old age coming upon them, when they find their vehicles not so strong as they used to be. They desire the strength and the faculties that they once had. It is wise for them to repress that desire, to realize that their bodies have done good work, and if they can no longer do the same amount as of yore, they should do gently and peacefully what they can, but not worry themselves over the change. Presently they will have new bodies; and the way to ensure a good vehicle is to make such use as one can of the old one, but in any case to be serene and calm and unruffled. The only way to do that is to forget self, to let all selfish desires cease, and to turn the thought outward to the helping of others as far as one’s capabilities go."

"Never respect years, only deeds."

"Will nature make a man of me yet?"

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

"Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form."

"The real affliction of old age is remorse."

"Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened."

"The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense."

"The first symptom is that hair grows on your ears. It's very disconcerting."

"There is something reassuring, too (at least, I find it so), in these renewals of former admirations. We all endeavour, as Spinoza says, to persist in our own being; and that endeavour is, he adds, the very essence of our existence. When, therefore, we find that what delighted us once can still delight us: that though the objects of our admiration may be intermittent, yet they move in fixed orbits, and their return is certain, these reappearances will suggest that we have after all maintained something of our own integrity; that a sort of system lies beneath the apparent variability of our interests; that there is, so to speak, a continuity within ourselves, a core of meaning which has not disintegrated with the years."

"People don't grow up — they just begin to overestimate their own importance."

"Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man."

"Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living."

"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals."

"No two moments in the life of an individual are exactly alike; there is between the later and the earlier periods only the similarity of the higher and lower parts of a spiral ascent."

"The old have nothing to pace themselves for, she’d say. This is the final sprint. Run. Run. See how far you can get before you fall."

"Age had not yet defeated her on all fronts, though it was a war of attrition she knew she was fated to lose."

"We claim the dignity of age, she thought, but the truth is, age leaves us without any dignity at all."

"There are some people who imagine that older adults don't know how to use the internet. My immediate reaction is, "I've got news for you, we invented it.""

"Now I was stuck and could feel the tide of years suddenly beginning to rise around me."

"I am old now, or at least, I am no longer young, and everything I see reminds me of something else I’ve seen, such that I see nothing for the first time. A bonny girl, her hair fiery red, reminds me only of another hundred such lasses, and their mothers, and what they were as they grew, and what they looked like when they died. It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things."

"And in truth, of course, I'm not just 60 - I'm twelve, I'm 23, I'm 37, I'm 42, I'm 18. I'm every age I've ever been. Depending on what day of the week it is and what the situation calls for at the moment."

"With age came wisdom. Sometimes wisdom came with an ass kicking, too. And nothing could kick ass like the whole world."

"With age comes wisdom. Or at least experience."

"Nothing makes a man feel older than a young woman."

"Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, , wisdom, , and this post-heroic absence of agitation."

"Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort."

"I understand that we all must age, and even [Chairman] Robert [Cyger] had his rebellious streak. It happens and it is part of growing up."

"It is always in season for old men to learn."

"Weak withering age no rigid law forbids, With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm, The sapless habit daily to bedew, And give the hesitating wheels of life Gliblier to play."

"What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for Beauty to forego her wreath? Yes; but not this alone."

"On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a wine cooler, and said that it was sixteen years old. "It is very small for its age," said Gnathæna."

"Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."

"Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read."

"Old age comes on apace to ravage all the clime."

"An old man in a house is a good sign in a house."

"Old age doth in sharp pains abound; We are belabored by the gout, Our blindness is a dark profound, Our deafness each one laughs about. Then reason's light with falling ray Doth but a trembling flicker cast. Honor to age, ye children pay! Alas! my fifty years are past!"

"By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty."

"Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon."

"When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to aging, not beyond aging, sees another who is aged, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, oblivious to himself that he too is subject to aging, not beyond aging. If I – who am subject to aging, not beyond aging – were to be horrified, humiliated, & disgusted on seeing another person who is aged, that would not be fitting for me."