Growing Old Quotes

...we're not eighteen anymore. We've lived. We've created things that last – things of joy, and things of burden.

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.

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.

It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.

The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted.

We go from disappointment to disappointment, from hope to denial, from expectation to surrender, as we grow older, thinking or coming to think that what was wrong was the wanting, so intense it hurt us, and believing or coming to believe that hope was our mistake and expectation our error, and that everything the more we want it the more difficult the having it seems to be.

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

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.

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.

We start our sometimes tedious, sometimes exciting, often times sad and stressful march to the grave the moment we're born, so it might as well be a march worth remembering.

As life runs on, the road grows strangetWith faces new, and near the endtThe milestones into headstones change,t’Neath every one a friend.

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

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. 

And we were in our thirties. Well into the Age of Boredom, when nothing is new. Now, I’m not being self-pitying; it’s simply true. Newness, or whatever you want to call it, becomes a very scarce commodity after thirty. I think that’s unfair. If I were in charge of the human life span, I’d make sure to budget newness much more selectively, to ration it out. As it is now, it’s almost used up in the first three years of life. By then you’ve seen for the first time, tasted for the first time, held something for the first time. Learned to walk, talk, go to the bathroom. What have you got to look forward to that can compare with that? Sure, there’s school. Making friends. Falling in love. Learning to drive. Sex. Learning to trade. That has to carry you for the next twenty-five years. But after that? What’s the new excitement? Mastering your home computer? Figuring out how to work CompuServe? “Now, if it were up to me, I’d parcel out. So that, say, at thirty-five we just learned how to go on the potty. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment! They’d have office parties. "Did you hear? The vice president in charge of overseas development just went a whole week without his diaper. We’re buying him a gift." It’d be beautiful.

You're the only friend I need Sharing beds like little kids And laughing 'til our ribs get tough But that will never be enough You're the only friend I need Sharing beds like little kids And laughing 'til our ribs get tough But that will never be enough

I wear my wrinkles like battle scars, having earned every last one slaying life’s dragons. They boast of my victories and some defeats while their beauty is a wealth of wisdom gained.

We live to work.Man was made to move.Without work we shall grow old quickly.

Look, moonI turned silver for you.

When you're a young man like yourself, life is full of wonders. Everything new. Everything an adventure. But as the years roll on, things become ordinary. Colors lose their vibrance. Stars lose their glitter. You become less in awe of the world. It loses its magic.I don't see this as a painful thing. I think it's a mercy. I believe it's all just so it makes it easier to let the whole thing go when it's our time to pass on. But when you've lived as long as I have, the weight of the years and the tarnished luster of the world can break you down. And it's hard to be alive and be so broken.

A beautiful woman should always have at the back of her mind that her ravishing appearance is only an ephemeral quality. When she wakes up in the morning, looks into the mirror, and notices that something is fading away, she knows that the time is ripe for marriage. She should be careful of who she takes into her life because the union is gonna be everlasting.

PartingOne is strong, a child now grownThe other weak, a parent aged-The strong once feebleThe weak once mighty-Time, the infinityhas marked them...

Personally, I'd rather grow old alone than in the company of anyone I've met so far. I don't experience myself as lonely, incomplete, or unfulfilled, but I don't talk about that much. It seems to piss people off--especially men. (Kinsey Millhone)

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

Nothing comes back. The eye sees for a moment, the ear hears, but look, now it is gone.

All age is a kind of tiredness, I think. When you’re young, the lines never show. Every morning you wake unmarked, wiped clear by sleep. One day, though, you see lines that itch, as though some crumb of existence has been creased into your skin. They can never be smoothed away, and after a while you forget that this heavy, irritable feeling wasn’t always there.

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

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry, aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert.

She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!

But me They cannot touch, Old age and death. The strange And ignominious end of old Dead folk!

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.

Europe, the land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts. The land where the economy gets to stagger all over the continent.

You can hide things from the world, but you can never hide things from time.

Life is so magnificent! How can I grow 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.

Butterfly KissesAged imperfectionsstitched upon my faceyears and years of wisdomearned by His holy grace.Quiet solitude in a humble homeall the family scattered nowlike nomads do they roam.Then a giftsent from abovea memorypure and tangiblewrapped in innocence andunquestioning love.A butterfly kisslands gently upon my cheekfrom an unseen childa kiss most sweet.Heaven grants graceand tears followas youth revisitsthis empty hollow.

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

Youth endures all things, kings and poetry and love. Everything but time.

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy-girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To live, to die, to overdose, to fall in a coma in the street... it is all the same. 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.

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

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.

THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINSLaugh, I tell youAnd you will turn backThe hands of time.Smile, I tell youAnd you will reflectThe face of the divine.Sing, I tell youAnd all the angels will sing with you!Cry, I tell youAnd the reflections found in your pool of tears -Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterdayTo guide you through the fears of tomorrow.

Among the worst things about growing old is the loss of those irreplaceable friends who added richness and depth to your life.

We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don’t just say I’m grown and ought to know. I don’t. I’m fifty and I don’t know nothing. What about it? Do I stay with him? I want to, I think. I want… well, I didn’t always… now I want. I want some fat in this life.”“Wake up. Fat or lean, you got just one. This is it.”“You don’t know either, do you?”“I know enough to know how to behave.”“Is that it? Is that all it is?”“Is that all what is?”“Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?”“Oh, Mama.” Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth. Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn’t do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over but the talking? - Violet Trace and Alice Manfred

Adulthood is a wonderful thing and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts. I believe the soul in Paradise must enjoy something nearer to a perpetual vigorous adulthood than to any other state we know.

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

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

Time stops when you are in love, even as you age.

If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away.

Don’t grow old to give up and don’t give up growing up

We are just too blinded by the phrase, "grow old together" and learning its meaning from hopeless movies and novels that glorify undying love and unbelievable understanding. Don't you think? Reality is... Love dies. People change. And we grow old together in present. Today, tomorrow, and every day after that.It's not about eternity. It's not till death do us part.It's about today. This day. And I believe only in today.So, come! Let's grow old together today!

UselessnessLet mine not be the saddest fate of all, To live beyond my greater self; to see My faculties decaying, as the tree Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall Let me hear rather the imperious call, Which all men dread, in my glad morning time, And follow death ere I have reached my prime, Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall. The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day Is kinder than the calm that lets it last, Unhappy witness of its own decay. May no man ever look on me and say, 'She lives, but all her usefulness is past.

Youth. I don't seek it through another because I have it within; it's a state of mind, a spirit that is free, and a mind that is playful. The shell of my being is altered by the effects of time, but nothing will tarnish a soul that will never forget what its like to experience creation with endless wonder and appreciation. Each time I see the first snowfall of the season I feel it's the first time I've seen it at all.

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

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.