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Ageing Quotes

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Ageing Quotes

“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.”

AgeGrowing UpGrowing OldAgeingPassage Of Time
Book:Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems
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“By midlife, we're usually aware enough to understand which of our issues most need attention. We've learned where we're strong, but also where we're weak. We know what parts of ourselves to be proud of and what parts of ourselves should change. We know what our issues are. It might not be a time when we're learning new things about ourselves so much as understanding more deeply what we already know. This is not the time to stop working on ourselves; it's the time when we've finally accumulated enough clues to help crack the case and solve the myself why and how we've kept ourselves bound for so long. Its not the time to give up and say, 'this is who I am, its too late to change.' Quite the opposite- its time to take a stand, once and for all, for your own potential. Don't worry that it took you so long to get to this point. It takes everyone this long. We know nothing until we know all the ways that we're not who we should be. Only then do we have a chance at becoming the people we've wanted to be, and God intended us to be, from the day we were born. And for that reason alone, these are sacred years.”

GrowthSelf AwarenessAgeingMidlife
Book:The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife
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“Most people age way earlier than necessary. By thirty, many are old in themselves. By forty, most have lost the spark of life. By fifty, they are already senior. All of this is entirely preventable and, to a large extent, also reversible. Ageing happens at all levels of our being, but the most obvious is the body. Use it or lose it. Of course, you will be fighting a losing battle if you only exercise your body and not your mind and spirit. When you use them all, they will gladly and efficiently work together. Although we cannot completely stop the march of time on our use-by-stamped bodies, we can have the blessings of a well-functioning and alive body, an active and bright mind, and a loving and expressive soul.”

LifeAgeEnergyHealthExerciseAgeingBody Mind SpiritAgeing WellAgeing GracefullyUse Body
Book:Touched by Love
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“Politics How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!”

PoetryPassionAgeing
Book:The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume 1: The Poems
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“But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day because it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness, the wonder, fear, and loneliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.”

LossDestinyAgeingFinding Oneself
Book:The Joy Luck Club
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“Loveliest of Trees Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.”

PoetryNatureAgeing
Book:A Shropshire Lad
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“Our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible. Serious illness or infirmity will strike. It is as inevitable as sunset. And then a new question arises: If independence is what we live for, what do we do when it can no longer be sustained?”

IndependenceSicknessAgeingInfirmity
Book:Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
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“The Eviction by Stewart Stafford The mind's paper vessel crumples Sodden with learning and memory Ne'er to sail waves of reminiscence A living statue, hewn by sculptor Time. The physician nor the shaman console Self-pitying sobs in the moaning wind Brought down by jackals in the dunes The skull's tenant but a daily squatter Nostalgic waves batter alien shores Déjà vu of the blood and the collegial A stranger's reflection in misting eyes A sandcastle sacked to the four winds © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved”

FamilyIdentityOld AgeAgeingDementiaMemory LossElderly PeopleAlzheimer SAlzheimer S DiseaseThe Father
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“The Liquid Pantomime by Stewart Stafford Time is life’s shareholder: Youth’s dark angel investor, Midlife’s white shark creditor, The old's Arctic blood liquidator. Debt, the fledgling's terra incognita, Misfortune's looking glass kvetch, Chicks for the boardroom wolf pit, Waddling forth in immature escrow. Margin call missives arrive at thirty, Backstick pressures piping up, Distressingly hostile AGM invites, Disbelief morphs into resignation. Cracking knees bear bankruptcy, Written off in a balance sheet's glance, No hibernation in a bear market, Phased out for new stock issues daily. © 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

Life LessonsTimeExistentialismHuman ConditionAgeingBankruptcyStock MarketMemento MoriCorporate WorldShareholder
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“O I never thought that joys would run away from boys, Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys; But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone, Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last, Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast And boyhood’s pleasing haunt like a blossom in the blast Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done, Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun And winter fought her battle strife and won.”

PastPoetryNatureLossSeasonsAgeing
Book:Poems Chiefly from Manuscript
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“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.”

HeartActionBeautifulWomenDecisionQualityBeautyMarriageForeverAdviceWasteEternalEternityAppearanceLovelyOld AgeWomanCharmWeddingDelaySoulmateEverlastingGrowing OldAgeingOldBest FriendMirrorEphemeralFadingAlwaysUnionFadeMarryFinding SomeoneLadiesBrideRingRushFading AwayBride And GroomThink On It
Author:Michael Bassey Johnson
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“WHEN PARENTS GROW OLD. Let them grow old with the same love that they let you grow ... let them speak and tell repeated stories with the same patience and interest that they heard yours as a child ... let them overcome, like so many times when they let you win ... let them enjoy their friends just as they let you … let them enjoy the talks with their grandchildren, because they see you in them ... let them enjoy living among the objects that have accompanied them for a long time, because they suffer when they feel that you tear pieces of this life away ... let them be wrong, like so many times you have been wrong and they didn’t embarrass you by correcting you ... LET THEM LIVE and try to make them happy the last stretch of the path they have left to go; give them your hand, just like they gave you their hand when you started your path!”

ParentsAgeing
Author:Unknown
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“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.' 'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' 'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

LoveAcceptanceBecomingAuthenticityBeing RealAgeingBeing Loved
Book:The Velveteen Rabbit
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“Life Cycles by Stewart Stafford From fair youth’s day, To dark-spotted age, The blooms of May, Usher out winter’s sullen maze. When the bars of the juvenile cage are splayed, And our stars have run their course, The debt of carefree times gets repaid, As we from this earthly plain divorce. We crawl to walk and stoop alone, As the dead remain uncured, Until Time grants us further loans, Immortality is a bloodline secured. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”

AgeLife LessonsPoetryPoetPoemPoemsAgeingCircle Of LifeLife HacksLife Cycles
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“It is man who has introduced a little grace, beauty, unknown charm and mystery into creation by singing about it, interpreting it, by admiring it as a poet, idealizing it as an artist and by explaining it through science, doubtless making mistakes, but finding ingenious reasons, hidden grace and beauty, unknown charm and mystery in the various phenomena of Nature. God created only coarse beings, full of the germs of disease, who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment, grow old and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human decrepitude.”

ArtGodSciencePoetryHumanityNatureAnimalMysteryMankindCreationDiseaseCharmAgeingInfirmityDecrepitude
Author:Guy de Maupassant
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“Anyway, those things would not have lasted long. The experience of the years shows it to me. But Destiny arrived in some haste and stopped them. The beautiful life was brief. But how potent were the perfumes, On how splendid a bed we lay, To what sensual delight we gave our bodies. An echo of the days of pleasure, An echo of the days drew near me, A little of the fire of the youth of both of us, Again I took in my hands a letter, And I read and reread till the light was gone. And melancholy, I came out on the balcony Came out to change my thoughts at least by looking at A little of the city that I loved, A little movement on the street and in the shops. Translated by Rae Dalven”

NostalgiaAgeingMelancholiaLosing Dreams
Author:C.P. Cavafy
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“RELFECTIONS (Time Machine III) A young man stares at his reflection, And sees an old man looking back. “Where did the time go?” he wonders. And, “How did we ever lose track?” “Is this the same person, that amounts to wondrous things? How long did we spend dreaming? Is this reflection really as it seems? Who are you old man? I’ve seen you in times before. Is this, the face that greets me, the mask I always wore?” The young man drops his stare, And moves towards the door. The boy he thought he was, He can recognize no more.”

ExistenceNostalgiaExistentialismAgeingTime MachineExistence QuotesNostalgia Quotes
Book:{self-titled}
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“Mrs. White ... said she didn't mind ageing, but did not want to be old. She deferred this inevitable state by never looking back, on the same principle, presumably, that prompts anyone walking along a girder twenty floors above the ground not to look down. Personally, I look neither forward, where there is doubt, nor backward, where there is regret; I look inward and ask myself not if there is anything out in the world that I want and had better grab quickly before nightfall, but whether there is anything inside me that I have not yet unpacked. I want to be certain that, before I fold my hands and step into my coffin, what little I can do and say has been completed.”

AgeRegretAgeing
Book:Resident Alien: The New York Diaries
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