Birthdays And Aging Quotes

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something. ~ Maxwell Maltz

You know you're getting old when all the names in your black book have M. D. after them. ~ Harrison Ford

My faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. ~ Mark Twain

Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it. ~ Brigitte Bardot

Old age is not for sissies. ~ Malcolm Forbes

Pleas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind,And count each birthday with a grateful mind. ~ Alexander Pope

Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult. ~ C.S. Lewis

One only has to watch aging siblings scrap over the worthless pots and pans and scuffed furniture of a deceased parent's estate- like toddlers over toys- to see how desperate is the need to wrest some last, pathetic, tangible measure of their parent's devotion. ~ Victoria Secunda

Hi People! ILOVE ELEVEN BIRTHDAYS AND A MANGO SHAPED SPACE ~ Wendy Mass

Old age breeds the miracle of recall. You have no short-term memory atall; you can't remember what you did minutes ago, but you can recall with exquisite clarity what you did on your fifth birthday and how it all felt. ~ Vicki Covington

I used to go to the U.S. Open on my birthdays and sit in the nosebleeds. ~ Andy Roddick

The humour of the Chinese people in inventing gunpowder and finding its best use in making firecrackers for their grandfathers' birthdays is merely symbolical of their inventiveness along merely pacific lines. ~ Lin Yutang

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young. ~ Joseph Addison

MODERN SCIENTIFIC CAPABILITY has profoundly altered the course of human life. People live longer and better than at any other time in history. But scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying into medical experiences, matters to be managed by health care professionals. And we in the medical world have proved alarmingly unprepared for it. ~ Atul Gawande

I go to the shelf and pick out a few poetry books to take with me. A few old favorites and a few I haven't gotten to yet. As I slip the books into my carry-on, it occurs to me that there really are a lot of poems about death, that I've always read many poems about dying, but had almost never noticed them before. They were always the ones I lightly skimmed, and I thought that maybe I could start reading these poems more carefully. It was almost nothing, but it was also a decision about my life. ~ Jacob Wren

I've enjoyed every age I've been, and each has had its own individual merit. Every laugh line, every scar, is a badge I wear to show I've been present, the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see. Nowadays, I don't want a "perfect" face and body; I want to wear the life I've lived. ~ Pat Benatar

It may be that I am no longer able to joke--that it is no longer a satisfactory defense mechanism. Some people are funny, and some are not. I used to be funny, and perhaps I'm not any more. There may have been so many shocks and disappointments that the defense of humor no longer works. It may be that I have become rather grumpy because I've seen so many things that have offended me that I cannot deal with in terms of laughter. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The one garment in the world with the greatest and longest popularity - over a century now - is Levi's denim blue jeans. Along with their practical durability, they show age honestly and elegantly, as successive washings fade and shrink them to perfect fit and rich texture. Ingenious techniques to simulate aging of denim come and go, but the basic indigo 501s, copper-riveted, carry on for decades. This is highly evolved design. Are there blue-jeans buildings among us? ~ Stewart Brand

Only then will women be able to talk about what "beauty" really involves: the attention of people we do not know, rewards for things we did not earn, sex from men who reach for us as for a brass ring on a carousel, hostility and scepticism from other women, adolescence extended longer than it ought to be, cruel aging, and a long hard struggle for identity. And we will learn that what is good about "beauty" - the promise of confidence, sexuality, and the self-regard of a healthy individuality - are actually qualities that have nothing to do with "beauty" specifically, but are deserved by and, as the myth is dismantled, available to all women. The best that "beauty" offers belongs to us all by right of femaleness. When we separate "beauty" from sexuality, when we celebrate the individuality of our features and characteristics, women will have access to a pleasure in our bodies that unites us rather than divides us. The beauty myth will be history. ~ Naomi Wolf

We proclaimed the freedom of the individual, bought and drove millions of cars to prove it, built more roads for the cars to drive on so we could go the everywhere that was nowhere. We watered our lawns, we washed our cars, we gulped plastic bottles of water to stay hydrated in our dehydrated land, we put up water parks.
We built temples to our fantasies--film studios, amusement parks, crystal cathedrals, megachurches--and flocked to them.
We went to the beach, rode the waves, and poured our waste into the water we said we loved.
We reinvented ourselves every day, remade our culture, locked ourselves in gated communities, we ate healthy food, we gave up smoking, we lifted our faces while avoiding the sun, we had our skin peeled, our lines removed, our fat sucked away like our unwanted babies, we defied aging and death.
We made gods of wealth and health.
A religion of narcissism.
In the end, we worshipped only ourselves.
In the end, it wasn't enough. ~ Don Winslow

Damn right! The time of your life! Gotta wrap up all those life events, all those parties, into one - birthdays, wedding, funeral." THen he turns to their father. "Very efficient, right, Dad?" ...
"Here's to my brother, Lev," Marcus says. "And to our parents! Who have always done the right thing. The appropriate thing. Who have always given generously to charity. Who have always given 10 percent of everything to our church. Hey, Mom - we're lucky you had ten kids instead of five, otherwise we'd end up having to cut Lev off at the waist! ~ Neal Shusterman

I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There was no good name for this spot. Evie, who had shot like an arrow from school into life, who had never wavered, who had seen clear right from the start where she wanted to get to, had lately found herself more and more in the brambles. Somehow, here she was, no longer certain where she was going. Or even if she wanted to get there.

The jobs had been won, the beds made, the dishes washed, the children sprouted. The wheel had stopped, and now what? Where, for instance, was the story of a middle-aged orphan with the gray streak in her hair, the historian who had rustled thirteenth-century women's lives out of fugitive pages, who believed more than most that there was no such thing as the certainty of a plot in the story of a life, in fact who taught this to students year in and year our, and yet who found herself lately longing, above all else for just that? Longing, against reason, for some kind of clear direction, for the promise of a pattern. For this relief--she pulled against the shoulder strap of her satchel--the unbearable relief of an omniscient narrator.

Adolescence, she reflected, pushing open the classroom door with a kind of savage glee, had nothing on this. ~ Sarah Blake

It behooves me to remember as I advance in age that death is an inevitable part of the life cycle rather than a medical failure. ~ Lisa J. Shultz

Tonight I've watched
the moon and then
the Pleiades
go down

The night is now
half gone; youth
goes; I am

in bed alone ~ Sappho

Aging and death is what happens to everybody. ~ Young Jean Lee

At least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness. The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality- the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. But even more daunting is the second kind of courage - the courage to act on the truth we find. ~ Atul Gawande

The ceremonies that persist - birthdays, weddings, funerals - focus only on ourselves, marking rites of personal transition. […]
We know how to carry out this rite for each other and we do it well. But imagine standing by the river, flooded with those same feelings as the Salmon march into the auditorium of their estuary. Rise in their honor, thank them for all the ways they have enriched our lives, sing to honor their hard work and accomplishments against all odds, tell them they are our hope for the future, encourage them to go off into the world to grow, and pray that they will come home. Then the feasting begins. Can we extend our bonds of celebration and support from our own species to the others who need us?
Many indigenous traditions still recognize the place of ceremony and often focus their celebrations on other species and events in the cycle of the seasons. In a colonist society the ceremonies that endure are not about land; they're about family and culture, values that are transportable from the old country. Ceremonies for the land no doubt existed there, but it seems they did not survive emigration in any substantial way. I think there is wisdom in regenerating them here, as a means to form bonds with this land. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

The loss of my sight was a great fillip. If I could go deaf and dumb I think I might pant on to be a hundred. ~ Samuel Beckett

The Barbies with their stick legs and rocket breasts were another problem Megan had to endure. She was supposed to spend hours dressing up or playing house with them, including the darker ones she was supposed to find more relatable. In a fit she'd once tried to commit Barbicide, defaced them with colored marker pens, chopped off hair, extracted eyes with scissors and de-limbed a few... The Barbie invasion proliferated on birthdays and at Christmas, relatives talked about incredible collection, as if she'd actually chosen to have them in her life. ~ Bernardine Evaristo

I think there's a part of the brain, probably somewhere in the back, that won't give up believing in magic. It was the part that made cavemen believe that drawing elks on stone would make for a good hunt the next day. And it's still chugging along, making you think you have lucky socks, or that your kids' birthdays will win the lottery. ~ Adam Rex

Thirty- eight years old and he was finished. He sipped at the coffee and remembered where he had gone wrong
or right. He'd simply gotten tired
of the insurance game, of the small offices and high glass partitions, the clients; he'd simply gotten tired of cheating on his wife, of squeezing secretaries in the elevator and in the halls;
he'd gotten tired of Christmas parties and New Year's parties and birthdays, and payments on new cars and furniture payments
light, gas, water
the whole bleeding complex of necessities.
He'd gotten tired and quit, that's all. The divorce came soon enough and the drinking came soon enough, and suddenly he was out of it. He had nothing, and he found out that having nothing was difficult too. It was another type of burden. If only there were some gentler road in between. It seemed a man only had two choices
get in on the hustle or be a bum. ~ Charles Bukowski

Aging is a myth, he argued, and he showed it by posting his personal best at 3:01 in his 61st year. ~ George Sheehan

It was difficult to imagine that a full day hadn't yet passed since we boarded the airliner in New York. I paused. Medieval man believed that one was placed beyond the touch of time, and therefore aging, while attending Mass. What, I wondered, would he have made of those hours we left up in the sky? I would not change my watch until I gave the matter more thought. ~ Tod Wodicka

I don't want to fight aging; I want to take good care of myself, but plastic surgery and all that? I'm not interested. ~ Christine Lahti

Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive, that you understand going to die, and you live a better life because of it. ~ Mitch Albom

Il arrive un âge où ils ne sont plus séduisants, ni «en forme», comme on dit. Ils ne peuvent plus boire et ils pensent encore aux femmes; seulement ils sont obligés de les payer, d'accepter des quantités de petites compromissions pour échapper à leur solitude. Ils sont bernés, malheureux. C'est ce moment qu'ils choisissent pour devenir sentimentaux et exigeants… J'en ai vu beaucoup devenir ainsi des sortes d'épaves.

"A time comes when they are no longer attractive or in good form. They can't drink any more, and they still hanker after women, only then they have to pay and make compromises in order to escape from their loneliness: they have become just figures of fun. They grow sentimental and hard to please. I have
seen many who have gone the same way. ~ Francoise Sagan

On the third day Vera said:

'I love your body because it is beautiful. But I do not know your soul. I do not know whether there is a soul. Nor is it necessary for me because your body is beautiful.

But everything is mutable and you will grow old. At first your face will grow old. Your body will live longer. An old face will be a mockery before a youthful body. And then a wasted body will be a mockery to ravenous desires.

This is like the dead light of the setting sun which from the clouds above was reflected in the water... feeble and full of disillusion.

Should I not kill you so that I might always possess you for myself.'

And Vera became terrifying.

I found this unpleasant.

But from these words I understood that she had decided upon the day.

("Thirty-Three Abominations") ~ Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

I'm like a backward berry, Unripened on the vine, For all my friends are fifty, And I'm only forty-nine. ~ Ogden Nash

The individual organs follow the same pattern as the whole organism, i.e. they have their period of growth, of stationary, maximum activity and then of aging decline. ~ Wilhelm, Ostwald

I expect to retire to a fine-grained heaven where the temperatures are always consistent, where the images slide before one's eyes in a continual cascade of form and meaning. ~ Ansel Adams

If you're blessed enough to grow older, which is how I look at aging, there's so much wisdom to be gained from people who are celebrating the process with vibrancy and vigor and grace. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; for in my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; and did not, with unbashful forehead, woo the means of weakness and debility: therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly. ~ William Shakespeare

We Have Medicalized Aging, and That Experiment Is Failing Us ~ Atul Gawande

If you can slow the biological process of aging, even a minor slowdown in the rate at which we age yields improvements in virtually every condition of frailty and disability and mortality that we see at later ages. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

Where have the years gone, Ruby Rose? Sometimes I have to stop and think about how old I am. When I wake up in the morning, before I move this tired old body or look in the blasted mirror, I swear I'm still a young man. It just feels like yesterday. I don't know how it's gone so fast. ~ Lea Davey

Gmorning.
Grateful for growing pains,
Grateful for the lines on my face,
Grateful for the crick in my neck,
Grateful for hot showers,
Grateful for broken coffee machines,
Grateful for the thumbs typing this,
Grateful for another day alive at the same time as you.

Gnight.
Grateful for long days,
Grateful for aches and pains,
Grateful for quick pad thai delivery,
Grateful for hot baths,
Grateful for early work calls tomorrow,
Grateful for the thumbs typing this,
Grateful for another day alive at the same time as you. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

She loved Bram in a clear-eyed way she'd never loved her ex-husband, no rose-colored glasses or mindless giddiness, no Cinderella fantasies or false certainty that he'd put her life in order. What she felt for Bram was messy, honest, and soul-deep. He felt like ... part of her, the best and the worst. Like someone she wanted to struggle through life with; share triumphs and catastrophes; share holidays, birthdays, every days ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. ~ Robert Jordan

We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do - some things - appointments, and people's birthdays, and letters to post, and all that - but not an absolutely bally insult like the above. ~ P.G. Wodehouse