Best 96 quotes in «growing old quotes» category

Glory went to look in on her father. He lay on his right side, his face composed, intent on sleep. His hair had been brushed into a soft white cloud, like harmless aspiration, like a mist given off by the endless work of dreaming.

Growing up without growing old is a utopian ideal.

Growing older is a blurred birth certificate that only can take us to this world’s perplexed journey, but it cannot smear the letters of the epitaph

If you eat your...leafy greens and...develop your abs and blabs...in order to live a long life, that's good, and maybe it will work. But the longer a life is, the more of it will be in old age.

I'd prefer to die in Texas when I'm old. They say most good things end the same way they started, and that's where I entered the world, so that's how I'll leave it.

If you don’t know how to grow old, don’t start learning how to grow old.

Having reached the end of my poor sinner’s life, my hair now white, I grow old as the world does, waiting to be lost in the bottomless pit of silent and deserted divinity, sharing in the light of angelic intelligences;

He was already beginning, as always happens at a respectable age, to take a firm stand for Raphael and the old masters––not because he was fully convinced of their lofty merit, but so as to shove them in the faces of young artists.

His discontent stemmed from dislike rather than appreciation for the hardness growing in him, and the fear that in another ten years he would not recognise himself. The fear that in another twenty, he would not even remember that any doubt had disturbed him. And that in some distant future, age and death would find him—the first person in history to utter on his deathbed: I wish I’d spent more time at the office.

How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast.

I can't believe you all had so much fun being young. I just want to be old. I want to be old and rich and smell like butterscotch." You would have thought I'd said something super awful. Like that I hated Led Zeppelin. Or worse, that I was a Republican. Dad unfolded his feet, let down his legs, and pulled my face to his. "Can't you see how you have the whole world in front of you, Maggie?" First of all, that's not even possible because just as much of the world is in front of me as is behind me because that's just how geography.

I glance back as I am pulling the door shut. I can see Mrs. Kasperek on her bed, in the apartment denuded of the books that were all her life.

I just wish moments weren’t so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!' 'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! . . . Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the dejected Isaac continued wandering. 'Stupid fool!' Isaac muttered quietly to himself as soon as he was far enough away not to be heard.

I have an idea that this is what enduring love really means. Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known.

I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in my eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing--yes,-- I'm growing old.

I'm not opposed to aging - even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I'm proud of my age. I'm proud that I've survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I'll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind...for however long it lasts.

Intensity of belief is diluted with age. But perhaps wisdom is in seeing our own failures, how we misdirected our energies? Nothing is entirely pure or sacred or certain as we grow older.

Isn't it weird how people grow up when you're not looking?

I think I may have to grow up without growing old. I think we're going to have to define differently what I'm going to be. We're going to have to define my growing up differently.

It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death... And they should! ...For they are in life.

It was the first time in a half century that they had been so close and had enough time to look at each other with some serenity and they had seen each other for what they were: two old people, ambushed by death, who had nothing in common except the mercy of an ephemeral past that was no longer theirs but belonged to two young people who had vanished and who could have been their grandchildren.

Life is so magnificent! How can I grow old?

I love the optimism on the shores of youth, where time hasn't yet eroded faith.

It's easy to grow old if you haven't grown up

I want to grow old with you,” he whispers. “I want to let you win at bingo, I want you to help me find my dentures, and I want to spend the evening watching the sunset with you every night from our two rocking chairs.” -Jackson 'Blame It on the Pain

Le cœur du vieux fennec finit par se laisser aller à l’exultation comme Haouda retirait un poignard fiché jusqu’à la garde dans le plastron d’un adepte de l’Obscur. « Je te dois une fière chandelle, capitaine, songea-t-il en passant l’arme à son ceinturon. Ah, je ne suis qu’un renard du désert, je vieillis... » Oublieux de ses blessures, jappant à en réveiller les gens d’Asferyl, son fils courait sur la plage. « Bientôt la relève. Mais pas encore… »

Mark raised his eyebrows, ‘you don't know the half of it,’ he further mumbled, more to himself than in reply to Frankie. ‘But listen up; because this isn’t about me anyway; this is about you, about how you need to sort it out, yeah? This is all about you getting yourself a girl, and settling down, right?’ Frankie offered up a wistful kind of sigh, supping his pint as those heavily suggestive words immediately grated: settle down and never settle up.

My heart is torn in tiny pieces scattered throughout the years. I exist in several places because you carry those pieces with you, wherever you go, whoever you choose to be, I’ll be beside you in one form or another.

My fugitive years are all hasting away, And I must ere long lie as lowly as they, With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head, Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead. 'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can, To muse on the perishing pleasures of man; Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments I see, Have a being less durable even than he.

One of the difficult things about growing older is that you start losing so many friends. On the other hand, the older you get, the less time you have to wait until you see them again.

Look, moon I turned silver for you.

People talk about how wonderful the world must seem to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives. That's clearer to me every day. Each morning I am like Adam waking up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes.

One who has passed the thirtieth year already is as good as dead-- it would be best to kill you off by then.

Se spunea chiar ca in Universal timpul nu trecea ca in afara lui, oamenii se schimbau imperceptibil si nu imbatraneau, mai mult ca prezentul fiind - poate chiar din cauza promiscuitatii de nenumarate feluri, cum zicea profesorul de greaca veche - singura vreme posibila.

Sobran wondered whether the angel was trying to follow his feelings about age or those of humans in general. He felt that he had to get his answer right, so he thought for a time before he told Xas, "It's as if I can no longer fit the space I've made for myself in the world. Yes--I've shrunk inside the space I've made.

So honest conversation about concerning geezerhood takes place mostly among geezers.

Suddenly being her age seemed great. She didn't have to look perfect. Hooray And think of all the senior discounts she had to look forward to not to mention Social Security Medicare and Medicaid. So what if she was afraid of getting old Big whoopdedoowho wasn't She wasn't alone everybody her age was in the same boat. She was going to relax and just let herself get older. Who cared if she wore twoinch heels instead of 3andahalf inch heels her feet hurt and not only that she was going to have a piec eof cake once in a while and she wasn't going to go anywhere she didn't feel like going anymore either. Bring on the Depends And the bunion pads and the Metamucil. And if she liked pretty music and old movies so what She wasn't hurting anyone. Hazel had always said "If you're still breathing you're ahead of the game." And she'd been right. Life itself was something to look forward to and so for whatever time she had left she was going to enjoy every minute wrinkles and all. What a concept

The bones of the oak tree that had stood by the spring branch during my youth were scattered about the ground, pieces of the skeleton of a majestic life that had passed while I was off growing up and old.

There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dreams, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place by E. B. White

There were, in Clochemerle, a number of lady 'invalids', their conversation one long jeremiad concerning their health, who had worn out their husbands and outlived them by fifteen or twenty years. Since, all their lives, they had spent themselves only drop by drop, their extreme old age was still charged with vital fluid, flowing very meagrely yet sufficient to keep them on their feet and living, so to speak, vegetatively, behind mask-like countenances of wood or old ivory. They breathed in slow motion, everything about them was almost dead excepting those feeble pulsations of the heart which kept just enough pale blood flowing beneath their wrinkled skins.

The sooner growing older is stripped of reflexive dread, the better equipped we are to benefit from the countless ways in which it can enrich us.

The whole idea of it makes me feel Like I’m coming down with something, Something worse than any stomach ache Or the headaches I get from reading in bad light – A kind of measles of the spirit A mumps of the psyche, A disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, But that is because you have forgotten The perfect simplicity of being one And the beautiful complexity introduced by two But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit At four I was an Arabian wizard I could make myself invisible By drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a solider, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the window Watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly Against the side of my tree house, And my bicycle never leaned against the garage As it does today, All the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, As I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imagry friends, Time to turn the first big number.

Never grow old, my little Briton. It really isn’t worth the effort.

Peter sighed into the water, and his breath sent a small circle of it into tiny ripples. "It seems cowardly, getting old. Don't you think?" She rolled onto her side to look at him, pillowing her ear with her right arm, and letting her fingers dangle in the water beyond her head. "How is it cowardly?" Peter kept his eyes on his reflection. "You just curl up around yourself, and sit by the fire, and try to be comfortable. When you get old, you just get smaller inside, and you try not to pay attention to anything but your blankets and your food and your bed." "Being comfortable is not a bad thing." Peter shrugged and turned his head to look at her as if it was a matter of fact. "Of course it is. Old people lock out all the scary, wild things. It's like they don't exist." She wanted to say that she would have liked for those things not to exist, either, but she held her tongue, because she didn't want to sound like a coward.

The Babies we were are buried, and their shadows are plodding on.

The day you lose your sense of wonder is the day you grow old.

THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINS Laugh, I tell you And you will turn back The hands of time. Smile, I tell you And you will reflect The face of the divine. Sing, I tell you And all the angels will sing with you! Cry, I tell you And the reflections found in your pool of tears - Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterday To guide you through the fears of tomorrow.

The more candles on my cake means I get a little more exercise in blowing them out.

... there is no quicker way of growing old than undue indulgence in regular habits. Indeed it seems probable that the reason why so many people die sooner than they should is because they have organised their lives in such a way that there is nothing left for them to do. Change, as is well-known, is not only a law of Nature, but the very breath of existence. And if you rule change out of your life there no longer seems any reason why you should continue altogether.

These books...," she begins, and stops. I am frightened for her, for myself decades from now, struggling to retain dignity with two strangers as they take away my books. I can see the straight line to her grave, to mine.