Growing Old Quotes

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

Duny," said Geralt seriously, "Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That's why there are so few of us. We're growing old, dying, without anyone to pass our knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left." "Geralt," whispered Calanthe. "Yes, you're not wrong, queen. Duny! You will give me that which you already have but do not know. I'll return to Cintra in six years to see if destiny has been kind to me. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Uselessness
Let 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. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds. ~ Matsuo Basho

Don't suggest that we are growing old, my Lord. We have only bloomed; and a very nice bouquet we make with our buds about us,' answered Mrs. Amy, shaking out the folds of her rosy muslin with much the air of dainty satisfaction the girl used to show in a new dress.
Not to mention our thorns and dead leaves,' added Jo, with a sigh; for life had never been very easy to her, and even now she had her troubles both within and without. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Growing old is not for sissies. ~ Emilie Richards

I never thought I'd reach 21. I used to feel that was old, but growing old doesn't scare me anymore. I just want to have done something super special and have had someone to do it with. ~ Edward Furlong

Growing old and cheerful means learning to live with all the contradictions. ~ Marty Rubin

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time. ~ Bob Hope

I am growing old of course, but I am still in the early stages of disintegration, and regarded as just about cool enough by some fashionable young ppl to be permitted to think aloud. ~ Pete Townshend

We saw Time's varied traces Were deep on every hand - Indeed, upon the people, More marked than on the land. The bands that once with firmness Could grasp the axe and blade, Now move with trembling motion, By strength of nerve decayed. The change in form and feature And furrows on the cheek Of Time's increasing volume, In plain, round numbers speak. And thus, as in a mirror's Reflection, we were told, With stereotyped impressions, The fact of growing old. ~ Eliza R. Snow

The key to successful aging is to pay as little attention to it as possible. ~ Judith Regan

My wish is to see you everyday, to say ILOVEYOU everyday, to hear you say ILOVEYOU everyday, to dream the same dream everyday, to give brith to a kid and raise him, growing old together like that, is it possible? ~ Ane Wowiling

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. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

Growing old is God's privilege to you ... you only can be compared to any antique and old wine ... antiques are expensive and old wines taste best ... above all, it beats the alternative
DYING YOUNG. So cheer up and be grateful that God is giving you that privilege. ~ Peekey

I'm just growing old, darling. I don't know about gracefully. ~ Judy Parfitt

The last great escape. I was done gambling, done betting on a ship that would never come in. I would cash in my chips while I was ahead. I didn't want to suffer the growing old, didn't want to wait until my memory went. It was all so tiresome. I would just go out in a blaze of glory before the parasites of sadness got at me and made me bitter. After that's the American way: take your own life before everything else takes it from you. ~ Brian James

The tales lovers tell each other about how they met are hushed and secret things. They change year by year, for we all meet many times as we grow up and become different and new and exciting people
and this never stops, even for a minute, even when we are ninety. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Never complain about growing old ... Some never have the privilege. ~ Mark Hart

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. ~ Moryah DeMott

Growing old is unavoidable, but never growing up is possible. I believe you can retain certain things from your childhood if you protect them - certain traits, certain places where you don't let the world go. ~ Johnny Depp

I do not wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite from cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and laughter, and ecstatic tears. ~ Anne Reeve Aldrich

Growing old can mean more than slowing down; it can be a time of truly growing down and incarnating further. Because the inner genius that tries to incarnate through us will keep calling for us to awaken further until we come to the end of our life adventure. ~ Michael Meade

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

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

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. ~ Dan Groat

Our lonely, gray mothers became visitors to a world in which they had no share. ~ Jens Christian Grondahl

Growing old is compulsory - growing up is optional. ~ Bob Monkhouse

Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old. ~ Rowan Williams

Growing older is not such a big deal for me, despite the fears that older actresses have in Hollywood. When I hit 40, for example, I didn't feel 40 - or whatever that is supposed to feel like. ~ Halle Berry

She maintained that ideas like completing each other and growing old together were just sweet pills that were deceitfully thrust down our throats. ~ Dhaval Rathod

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

Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron - at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old. ~ Jules Verne

November is usually such a disagreeable month ... as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully ... just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilights. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Ulysses Club (Australia) a social club for riders over 40, whose membership is dedicated to "growing old disgracefully", or ~ Stella Rheingold

Just as we seldom realize that we are growing old until we are already old, so do the contemporary actors in a major social change seldom realize that society is changing until the change has already come. ~ James Burnham

Life. Too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday. ~ John Updike

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress ~ W.B.Yeats

Etymology: from Latin ad-, "to" + visum, past participle of videre, "to see". Advice is what you get from your parents when you are growing up, and from your children when you are growing old. ~ Evan Esar

They were dead; I could no longer deny it. What a thing to acknowledge in your heart! To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. ~ Yann Martel

I don't mind growing old as long as I continue to grow ~ Darrius Garrett

The Marquis De Sade said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. When a boss humiliates an employee, or a man humiliates his wife, he is merely being cowardly or taking his revenge on life, they are people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul, never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast, or to understand that sex, pain and love are all extreme experiences. Only those who know those frontiers know life; everything else is just passing the time, repeating the same tasks, growing old and dying without ever having discovered what we are doing here. ~ Paulo Coelho

Growing old with the woman I love would be my first choice, but dying reconciled with her isn't a bad second. ~ Brent Weeks

The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain. Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It's not that I'm particularly worried about growing old. Nor am I all that bothered about wrinkles, grey hair and all that. BUT. Major but. I don't like the idea of dying – not when i have so much left to do! That, people, is the rather unwelcome realisation that strikes me now and then, namely that the number of years ahead of me are fewer than the ones behind me, and while I have ticked off a lot of items on that mental list of mine, there are so many things left. Like riding through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair, to mention one. ~ Anna Belfrage

As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn't know how to express them, but rather it didn't know what to express. ~ Haruki Murakami

A gaggle of old ladies is glued to the window at the end of the hall like children or jailbirds. They're spidery and frail, their hair as fine as mist. Most of them are a good decade younger than me, and this astounds me. Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.
There are five of them now, white headed old things huddled together and pointing crooked fingers at the glass. ~ Sara Gruen

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

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Growing old is a pathetic thing. It is full of limitations and reduction. It happens to us all, I know; but I think that it might not have to. I think it happens to those of us who request it. And in our current mind-set, our collective ennui, it is what we have chosen to do. But one day a mutant child will be born who refuses to age, who refuses to acknowledge the limitations of these bodies of ours, who lives in health until he is done with life, not until his body no longer supports him. He will live for hundreds of years, like Noah. Like Moses. This child's genes will be passed to his offspring, and more like him will follow. And their genetic makeup will supplant the genes of those of us who need to grow old and decay before we die. I believe that one day it will come to pass; however, such a world is beyond my purview. ~ Garth Stein

There is an enormous difference between Russia and Western Europe. ~ Herman Gorter

The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend. ~ Ed Koch

The row of villas which lines Western Avenue is like a row of pink graves in a field of grey; an architectural image of middle age. Their uniformity is the discipline of growing old, of dying without violence and living without success. They are houses which have got the better of their occupants, whom they change at will, and do not change themselves. Furniture vans glide respectfully among them like hearses, discreetly removing the dead and introducing the living. Now and then some tenant will raise his hand, expending pots of paint on the woodwork or labour on the garden, but his efforts no more alter the house than flowers a hospital ward, and the grass will grow its own way, like grass on a grave. ~ John Le Carre

Every moral has a story, every story has and end. Every battle has its glory, and its consequence. ~ Ben Harper

Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Growing old is the price you pay for living. Growing up is optional.

Be true to yourself - don't let people turn you into something you're not. ~ Chris Mawbey

Did you see a future for us, Tal?" I asked, but she only stared. "Did you see us waking up together? Smiling in the morning? Did you see us laughing and growing old? Did you see me loving you even more for every morning as the years flew past?" I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Boy, I sure did. ~ Joe Ducie

By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be growing old. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others. ~ Virginia Woolf

You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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. ~ Eric Powell

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. ~ Willa Cather

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

As I savored the meal, I struggled against the dark force that kept tugging at me, telling me I was never going to leave; adhering to my consciousness like sap, or tar, or glue; enveloping me in a sticky sickness that drained my vitality. I felt myself growing old as I sat there, the joints stiffening, the bones aching, the sense of identity melting away like a forgotten candle left to burn itself out. As I settled back into my cot for the evening hibernation, I understood I had been captured. I realized my spirit was ensnared. I knew what must be done. Whatever the cost, I told myself, I would be back on the road at dawn. ~ Steven Hubbell

Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are old people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticize everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shriveled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child's heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of compassion and forgiveness. They become a community's hidden treasures, sources of unity and life. They are true contemplatives at the heart of community. ~ Jean Vanier

I wouldn't be young again even if it were possible, but I am not going to pretend that growing old is all sweetness and light. ~ Ruth Rendell

As Christians, we are all engaged in the business of discerning and obeying God's call, and this usually means that soon enough we find ourselves out beyond our own competence, frightened at what God demands and feeling cosmically abandoned, left in the lurch with a job for which our own resources are completely inadequate…Sooner or later, the panic touches each one of us who accepts God's call and heads, eyes wide open, straight into some difficult and mysterious work - like pastoring a church, teaching a class, going back to school, learning a language, creating a work of art. The panic descends on everyone who accepts God's call to do something that engages our heart and wracks our soul - like making a marriage proper through better and worse, raising a child and letting her go into adulthood, enduring a terrible illness, growing up, growing old. In fact, being called out far beyond our own competence is part of our regular experience with God. ~ Ellen F. Davis

Youth is not a curse, but a fleeting blessing. Youth enables us to cavort freely unconcerned with the larger issues in life. Aging and the accompanying responsibilities that come with added maturity is what augments, vexes, and then excises us. Maturation represents the accumulation of supplanting changes happening in a person over time including physical, mental, and social growth and development. Growing old gracefully entails submission to biological alterations and witnessing unsettling changes in cultural and societal conventions. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The thing about growing old is that when you wake up with a new pain, you can just about count on it becoming a permanent part of your life! ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley

If the infinity of the sea may call out thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from another infinity still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more he is wearied by life the dearer are those calls to him. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

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. ~ Crystal Woods

I suppose that there's quite a difference between growing old and growing up. ~ Emory Sharplin

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! ~ Mansi Laus Deo

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. ~ Billy Collins

Time comes when every man's got to feel something new
when he's got to feel young again, just because he's growing old. Women are just the same. But when we get that way we change our hairdress. Or get a new cook. ~ Clare Boothe Luce

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid! ~ Robert Browning

The unending problem of growing old was not how he changed, but how things did. ~ Toni Morrison

Do I believe in coupling? Do I believe in commitment? Do I believe in co-parenting, raising children together, having a family, and growing old with someone? I absolutely believe in all of those things. I just don't believe that you need to be married to do that. I love going to weddings, though. I do love a good wedding. ~ Laura Wasser

Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many. ~ Mark Twain

I am growing old, and my future, so to speak, is already behind me. ~ George Wald

Know that you are the perfect age. Each year is special and precious, for you shall only live it once. Be comfortable with growing older. ~ Louise Hay

Growing old was simply a process of drawing closer to that ultimate independence called death. ~ Martha Ostenso

I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up about and now that I am old, hopefully I speak about it with some authority. ~ Loudon Wainwright III

When I was younger, I used to make resolutions which imagined were virtuous. I was less anxious to be what I was, than to become what I wished to be. Now, I am not far from thinking that in irresolution lies the secret of not growing old. ~ Andre Gide

Growing old is not growing up. ~ Douglas Horton

No wonder such a big part of growing old is learning to lower one's expectations, only we call that maturity and wisdom so as not to sound too defeatist. When you are young you demand ecstasy; when you are old you settle for anything short of agony. ~ Jonathan Hull

I call it nirvana, the complete destruction of old age and dying. ~ Gautama Buddha

One trouble with growing old is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure, who didn't amount to much when he was your age. ~ E.W. Howe

The most important thing is growing old gracefully. ~ Audrey Hepburn

It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

When I look at you, I don't just see your face.
I see my entire future. I see our marriage.
I see our children. I see us fighting. I see us making up. I see us growing old together.
In my version of the future, we are quite lucky.
Because I even see us dying together.
I see my forever in you." - Dev Singham ~ M.V. Kasi

Old is old at any age. Old is when you quit asking questions about this, that, and everything. Old is when you forget how to love-or worse, don't care. Old is when you don't want to dance anymore. Old is when you don't want to learn anything new except how to be old. Old is when people tell you that you are old-and you believe them. ~ Carew Papritz

The people I've respected most in the industry over the years - Paul Newman, for instance. I just loved the way he handled growing old on-screen. It's understanding that you're now basically a character actor. Which is fine, but you have to pay attention to it. ~ George Clooney

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

Aging is inevitable but growing old is a choice. ~ Joseph Rain

You're growing old together," she said to me. "You and what frightens you. ~ Vivian Gornick

We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves. ~ Bernard Baruch

Growing older is not upsetting; being perceived as old is. ~ Kenny Rogers