Aging Elderly Old Seniors Quotes

Tom got to rattling off the pranks he and his school boy buddies pulled ... and what I saw wasn't an old man gone wistful but rather an old man still resonating to the glee of a young heart. ~ Michael Perry

The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another - it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time. ~ John Scalzi

Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Old age had distilled her down to her essence. ~ J. Courtney Sullivan

To a man and woman, all of her elderly patients had been surprised to be old - which Avery privately regarded as a serious failure to pay attention. ~ Lionel Shriver

These wrinkles are the hands of time,
The journeys I've been on
They've seen me through a thousand days,
And ev'ry victory won

These fragile hands, With exposed bones,
Are not a fearful sight
But rather, they, my faithful partners,
Rocked babies through the night

These eyes are weak, They see much less,
Than yours they've seen much more
They've guided me through birth, through death,
Through grief, through hurt, through war

These ears can hear so very little,
Yet they've learned to listen much
They perk up not for gossip now,
But for a heart to touch

Those younger often look my way,
With pity looks to give
Yet this old body doesn't mean I am dying,
But rather, that I have lived ~ Emily Nelson

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Days are slow, but years are racing fast.
No matter how hard I try, my life is not going to last.

My social circle is becoming thinner.
Even after so many wins, why don't I feel like a winner?

When I look at myself in the mirror,
I see an elderly staring at me with horror.

So much remains untold, but my brain is losing its hold.
Now that I have become so old, being alive is what I behold. ~ Shon Mehta

Growing old is humbling and it takes effort to accomplish this stage of life with dignity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I would not say that old men grow wise, for men never grow wise; and many old men retain a very attractive childishness and cheerful innocence. Elderly people are often much more romantic than younger people, and sometimes even more adventurous, having begun to realize how many things they do not know. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Gray hair is a crown of life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In a Chicago cafe the other night, an elderly man passed a table.
"There goes George," observed an onlooker. "When he was young, he was a handsome guy and had many companies. Left a wife and two kids to starve, and ran off with another woman. And now look at him. Old, broke and very sad."
"That's the way-it-goes," nodded Elly Kleinman. "Time wounds all heels. ~ Groucho Marx

My sister Sarah, with all the advantages of youth, was, strangely enough, less pliable. She did full justice to Pesca's excellent qualities of heart; but she could not accept him implicitly, as my mother accepted him, for my sake. Her insular notions of propriety rose in perpetual revolt against Pesca's constitutional contempt for appearances; and she was always more or less undisguisedly astonished at her mother's familiarity with the eccentric little foreigner. I have observed, not only in my sister's case, but in the instances of others, that we of the young generation are nothing like so hearty and so impulsive as some of our elders. I constantly see old people flushed and excited by the prospect of some anticipated pleasure which altogether fails to ruffle the tranquillity of their serene grandchildren. Are we, I wonder, quite such genuine boys and girls now as our seniors were in their time? Has the great advance in education taken rather too long a stride; and are we in these modern days, just the least trifle in the world too well brought up? ~ Wilkie Collins

Appeal with respect to elderly people as you would to the members of your own family. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The paradox of life; I wish to have healthy long life. But no one wants to show the glory of the gray hair. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A friend of mine who spent years in India with a great teacher from the ancient forest tradition tells a moving story... Years after his beloved teacher had died, he was back in India staying at the home of his guru's most devoted Indian disciple.

"I must show you something," the disciple said to my friend one day. "This is what he left for me." My friend was excited, of course. Any trace of his teacher was nectar to him. He watched as the elderly man opened the creaking doors of an ancient wooden wardrobe and took something from the back of the bottom shelf. It was wrapped in an old, dirty cloth.

"Do you see?" he asked my friend.

"No. See what?"

The disciple unwrapped the object, revealing an old, beat-up aluminum pot, the kind of ordinary pot one sees in every Indian kitchen. Looking deeply into my friend's eyes, he told him, "He left this for me when he went away. Do you see? Do you see?"

"No, Dada," he replied. "I don't see."

According to my friend, Dada looked at him even more intensely, this time with a mad glint in his eyes.

"You don't have to shine," he said. "You don't have to shine." He rewrapped the pot and put it back on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe.

My friend had received the most important teaching... He did not have to transform himself in the way he imagined: He just had to learn to be kind to himself. If he could hold himself with the care Dada showed while clutching t ~ Epstein Mark

Oh, once you've been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn't want you back." Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. "We - by whom I mean anyone over sixty - commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight. ~ David Mitchell

The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl. They simply found the entire proposition ridiculous. Writers were dead and English, or else extremely elderly and American; they were not sixteen years old and Canadian. ~ Margaret Atwood

Respectability had its uses. I wondered idly how many spymasters had thought of using elderly ladies? You didn't hear about old women as spies - but then again, that might merely indicate how good they were at it. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I got the idea of Loving from a manservant in the Fire Service during the war. He was serving with me in the ranks, and he told me he had once asked the elderly butler who was over him what the old boy most liked in the world. The reply was: 'Lying in bed on a summer morning, with the window open, listening to the church bells, eating buttered toast with cunty fingers.' I saw the book in a flash. ~ Henry Green

An elderly black man stepped forward and prayed aloud for Lincoln's safety. Much to Coffin's surprise, the President "lifted his own hat from his head and bowed to the old man."24 ~ Noah Andre Trudeau

An inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness ... played the calm and virtuous old men. ~ Charles Dickens

Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions. ~ Dogen

The paradox of life; everyone desire a fuller life. But no one wishes to increase in age. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Both of these students- both high school seniors both old enough to vote in the upcoming election- thought 'Al' Qaeda was a person. At that time the United States had been at war for five and a half years and here were two students two young adults leaving the educational system who had never heard of al Qaeda. Both by the way had passed the multiple-choice reading section of the state's high school exit exam. ~ Kelly Gallagher

You don't have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver's chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions - nursing homes and intensive care units - where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. ~ Atul Gawande

Equally worrying, and far less recognized, medicine has been slow to confront the very changes that it has been responsible for - or to apply the knowledge we have about how to make old age better. Although the elderly population is growing rapidly, the number of certified geriatricians the medical profession has put in practice has actually fallen in the United States by 25 percent between 1996 and 2010. Applications to training programs in adult primary care medicine have plummeted, while fields like plastic surgery and radiology receive applications in record numbers. Partly, this has to do with money - incomes in geriatrics and adult primary care are among the lowest in medicine. And partly, whether we admit it or not, a lot of doctors don't like taking care of the elderly. ~ Atul Gawande

Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. ~ Nikolai Gogol

We're going down to the Margarita Grill to smell the lobster, then we're going to watch the sunrise, and in between we'll probably have hot, unsafe animal sex. ~ Darynda Jones

We are never old with the strength of the spirit, although the body may fail. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

As the technology is developed, autonomous driving could provide driving opportunities for the physically challenged or enable the elderly to continue driving longer. This will be vital as many nations experience an aging population. ~ William Clay Ford, Jr.

It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Do not forget you mother, when she is old. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The young should not think of themselves as immature and the elderly need not view themselves as feeble. Our minds control our bodies. Have no age, transcend both past and future, and enter into naka-ima - the eternal present. ~ H.E. Davey

It was the very fact of the note, stuck on my windshield on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, hundreds of miles from where Fatback had lived and, apparently, died. That, and the small deerskin pouch of tobacco that was tied to it. Fatback was a black Lab - a good dog - who had belonged to Dan, an elderly Lakota man who lived far out on the Dakota plains. Years before, as a result of a book of elders' memories I had done with students at Red Lake, Dan had contacted me to come out to his home to speak with him. His request was vague, and I had been both skeptical and apprehensive. But, reluctantly, I had gone, and it had changed my life. We had worked together, traveled together, and created a book together in which the old man told his stories and memories and thoughts about Indian people and our American land. ~ Kent Nerburn

C'mon!" Marlboro Man shouted, jumping onto the back of a nearby spray truck driven by an elderly man. "Hop in there with Charlie!" He pointed toward the door of the old, royal blue vehicle. Not having many other appealing options, I ran to the truck and hopped inside. "Well…hi, darlin'!" the old man said, putting his truck into gear. "You ready?"
"Um, sure," I replied. Who was Charlie? Had we met before? Why was I in his spray truck, and where was he taking me?
I would have asked Marlboro Man these questions, but he'd jumped onto the back of the truck too quickly. As far as I could tell, I was riding in the pickup with an elderly gentleman who was about to drive the both of us straight into hell. I guess I'd have to ask all my questions later…when they wouldn't be so relevant anymore. ~ Ree Drummond

A long time ago, in a town with which I used to be familiarly acquainted, there dwelt an elderly person of grim aspect, known by the name and title of Doctor Grimshawe, whose household consisted of a remarkably pretty and vivacious boy, and a perfect rosebud of a girl, two or three years younger than he, and an old maid of all work, of strangely mixed breed, crusty in temper and wonderfully sluttish in attire. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hey you, long face,' shouted an elderly gent who must have been at least seventy years old, but who was dancing through the flooded, rainy streets, waving a rolled umbrella like a sword. 'Don't you sing those Tragedy Songs round here. ~ Salman Rushdie

All the Scarabae - all but one - were crowded in the garden. They watched her. Their grim
old faces gave away nothing. Like elderly kiddies at a play they did not understand yet knew to be
important, they regarded her as she stood behind the gate.
Goodbye, she thought. Goodbye for ever. ~ Tanith Lee

Once we were young, now we are adult. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

My head snaps in her direction. 'Stop that,' I say, standing in place.
'Stop what?' she asks.
'With this thing, this niceness.'
'What d-you-?'
'I'm kytaen, a tool. You're Chosen. We're not friends. That kind of word doesn't exist between our two species. Treat me how you're supposed to and stop this… act.'
A moment passes, and then she says, 'I see. So there's going to be no civility between us, eh?'
'I'm glad you finally understand.'
'I didn't exactly overlook your unsubtle hostility towards me.'
'Then why bother being nice?'
'I was raised to be polite to elderly people.'
'Then you should know I'm not old. I'm immortal.'
'Quit bragging'
I blink. 'I wasn't bragging, I was stating a fact.'
'It sounded like bragging to me.'
'It wasn't.'
'It sounded like it.'
'Well it wasn't.'
'Old men do tend to brag after all.'
'I wasn't bragging!'
She gives me an impish grin. 'They also lose their temper easily.'
I grit my teeth. ~ Giselle Simlett

Emil was already familiar with those people who always say, "Goodness, everything was better in the old days." And he no longer listened when people told him that in the old days the air was cleaner or that cows had bigger heads. Because it usually wasn't true. Those people simply wanted to be dissatisfied, because otherwise they would have to be satisfied. ~ Erich Kastner

We need more worship wars, not fewer. What if the war looked like this in your congregation
the young singles petitioning the church to play more of the old classics for the sake of the elderly people, and the elderly people calling on the leadership to contemporize for the sake of the young new believers? This would signal a counting of others more important than ourselves (Phil 2:3), which comes from the spirit of the humiliated, exalted King, Christ (Phil 2:5-11). ~ Russell D. Moore

Old age," she says, "is a wonderful disguise. ~ Katherine Applegate

But for me, if we're talking about romance, cassettes wipe the floor with MP3s. This has nothing to do with superstition, or nostalgia. MP3s buzz straight to your brain. That's part of what I love about them. But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy human bodies. The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it's full of wasted space, unnecessary noise. Compared to the go-go-go rhythm of an MP3, mix tapes are hopelessly inefficient. You go back to a cassette the way a detective sits and pours drinks for the elderly motel clerk who tells stories about the old days
you know you might be somewhat bored, but there might be a clue in there somewhere. And if there isn't, what the hell? It's not a bad time. You know you will waste time. You plan on it. ~ Rob Sheffield

Well, they're queer; but they're all very old, and so they're bound to be. But they're not mental,' explained Mother; adding candidly, 'Anyway, not enough to be put away. ~ Gerald Durrell