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Ageing Quotes

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Ageing Quotes

“I just got a rather nasty shock. In looking for something or other I came across the fact that one of my cats is about to be nine years old, and that another of them will shortly thereafter be eight; I have been labouring under the delusion they were about five and six. And yesterday I happened to notice in the mirror that while I have long since grown used to my beard being very grey indeed, I was not prepared to discover that my eyebrows are becoming noticeably shaggy. I feel the tomb is just around the corner. And there are all these books I haven't read yet, even if I am simultaneously reading at least twenty...”

DeathReadingAgingOld AgeAgeing
Book:Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer
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“Every day that we live, we must address new truths that pertain to life and death. Each incremental decade in the hayride of life incites us to address a newfangled realism. By age ten, the weepy passing of pets or grandparents, the death of sitting or past presidents, or the demise of other notable figures, obliges us to address the fact that no one including our parents and siblings will live forever. Cognition of each person’s fickle mortality spurs an awaking in our ken, which newly grasped knowledge is sure to cause a ray of resentment for humankind’s lack of immortality, especially if the people who a person cares deeply about fail to sanctify their body with nourishing and purifying habits.”

AgeChildhoodYoung AdultTeenagerMaturityAgeingMaturationStages Of LifeChange Of LifeStages Of Growth
Author:Kilroy J. Oldster
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“So many people feel 80 years old at 44. Because the society cuts off particularly women from their desires when it deems their sexual market value nonviable (not capable of growing or developing). Don’t let it cut you off from yours. Remember, your sensuality is your advantage... and your adventure. Live and Love like you’re in your prime, because as long as you’re in touch with your sensuality you are in your prime baby, no matter what age you are.”

AgeRomanceYoungSensualitySensualEcstasyAgeingAlivenessDesirability
Author:Lebo Grand
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“It occurred to him, and had occurred to him before, that there was after all something to be said for dealing with things the way most people of his age seemed to do. It was sensible perhaps to stop noticing, to believe that this was still the same world they were living in, with some dreadful but curable aberrations, never to understand how the whole arrangement had altered.”

AgeChangeProgressIgnoranceMaturityAgeingAlice Munro
Book:Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You
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“How different the life cycle looks if we substitute the word ‘growth’ for ageing. The word ‘age’ has become so contaminated by contempt and fear that it’s tempting to dispense with it altogether. Better, though, to try to reclaim it, detoxify it and attach it to the whole life cycle, rather than just offloading the idea of ageing onto later life. For to age is to live and to live is to age, and being anti-age (as so many products proudly proclaim themselves) is tantamount to being anti-life. By embracing age we embrace the life process itself, with all its pain, joy and difficulty. If we can cultivate a respect for our own growth, and develop the ability to greet our ageing self with both pleasure and realism, and without the need to either idealize or deride its younger incarnation, then we’re putting in place important capacities that will serve us our entire lives.”

AgeAgeing
Book:How to Age
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“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.”

AgeYoungTimeYouthFatigueGrowing OldAgeingWrinklesTiredness
Book:In a Dark Wood
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“By contrast, my wife at fifty-two yeas old seems to me just as attractive as the day I first met her. If I were to say this out loud, she would say, 'Douglas, that's just a line. No one prefers wrinkles, no one prefers grey.' To which I'd reply, 'But none of this is a surprise. I've been expecting to watch you grow older ever since we met. Why should it trouble me? It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or fourty-three. It's that face.' Perhaps she would have liked to hear this but I had never got around to saying it out loud. I had always presumed there would be time and now, sitting on the edge of the bed at four a.m., no longer listening out for burglars, it seemed that it might be too late.”

LoveAgeMarriageDivorceBreak UpAgeingWrinkles
Book:Us
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“C'est exactement la vieillesse que je nous souhaite, à Hélène et moi. Il y aurait de grandes bibliothèques, des divans profonds, les cris des petits-enfants dehors, des confitures de baies, de longues conversations dans des chaises longues. Les ombres s'allongent, la mort approche doucement. La vie a été bonne parce qu'on s'est aimés. Ce n'est peut-être pas comme ça que ça finira, mais c'est comme ça, s'il ne tenait qu'à moi, que j'imaginerais que ça finisse.”

AgeAgeingVieillesse
Author:Emmanuel Carrère
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“Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed ... Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.”

LifeAgeTimeAgingAgeingOldMidlife Crisis
Book:A Maze of Death
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“We may say that all ages are dangerous to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shyness and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them the end of youth, and that quickens their pace.”

AgeWomenYouthAgeingThirties
Book:Dangerous Ages
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“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.”

InspirationalAgeAgeing
Author:Anna Belfrage
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