Quotessence
Home / Topics / Aging Quotes

Aging Quotes

Browse 2388 quotes about Aging.

Related topics

Aging Quotes

“Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny. Whether one would even consider turning to religion in advanced years has much to do with upbringing, which makes all the more important standing up to the presumptions of the religious in front of children. One would regard the Biblical events – a spontaneously igniting bush, a sea’s parting, human parthenogenesis, a resurrected prophet and so on – that supposedly heralded God’s intervention in our affairs as the stuff of fairy tales were it not for the credibility we unwittingly lend them by keeping quiet out of mistaken notions of propriety.”

“And no matter how upbeat they are—no matter how ingenious and flexible—the unemployed and underemployed understand that the clock is always ticking in the background. The longer you are unemployed, the less likely you are to find an appropriate job, and entries like “sales associate,” “limo driver,” or “server” do not make an attractive filling for the growing Gap in one’s résumé. At the same time, you are inexorably aging past the peak of occupational attractiveness, which seems to lie somewhere in the midthirties now. Experience is not an advantage; in fact, as Richard Sennett notes of corporate employment, “as a person’s experience accumulates, it loses value.” So once you fall into the low-wage, survival-job trap, there’s a good chance that you will remain there—an unwilling transplant from a more spacious and promising world.”

“Less mutable qualities, like age, may have worked against me too. My résumé revealed only that I was probably over forty. But even that relatively youthful status could have repulsed many potential employers. Business journalist Jill Andresky Fraser warned me that a forty-plus woman was unlikely to be hired except by someone seeking a “motherly secretary,” Katherine Newman, among others, has documented corporate age discrimination, quoting, for example, a Wall Street executive who told her, “Employers think that [if you’re over forty] you can’t think anymore. Over fifty and [they think] you’re burned out.”

“Morning. Sitting in the courtyard, coffee. An old pair of jeans and a messed up damaged old black shirt cigarette in hand words being channeled from someplace somewhere nowhere places unknown without a destination. You're an artist without a canvas. The world is your canvas. Your life is the canvas. You've got to at least create something, say something, do something while you're sorry ass still remains tethered to this planet. Some people call this life, some people call this earth while others just call it purgatory. I suppose in the end that it's all up to you. Make the most of it because it ain't coming back around.”

“In his moments of lucidity, which would later become increasingly rare and painful, he suggested an explanation of what was happening to him: “I am a guilty man. That is why I am being punished like Abuya's heretical sons, I gazed when I should not have gazed and turned my eyes away when I should not have. I saw a sin committed… a crime…I could have, I should have, done something, called out, shouted, struck a blow. I forgot our precepts, our laws, that require an individual to struggle against evil wherever it appears. I forgot that we can never simply remain spectators, we have no right to stand aside, to keep silent, to let the victim fight the aggressor alone. I forgot so many things that day…That is why I am forgetting other things now. Can there be anything worse than that?” Yes, there was worse, there is worse: to forget that one has forgotten.”

“Silent our body is a sacred temple, A place to connect with other people. Can't we just stay any younger? Really, we might keep it stronger, Elated, rather than so tilted or feeble!!”

“Well he knew that in this country, in this life, we fashion ourselves. We pick our spot and our companions and how we'll earn our keep, and that's how we go about the fashioning. Through the where of it, and the who, and the how. But it that is how we fashion ourselves, then surely it follows that with the loss of each of these elements comes the winnowing away. The burying of one's spouse, the retirement from the job, the moving from one's home where one has lived for twenty-two years - this is the undoing, the unmaking. It is through this process that time and intent reclaim the solitary soul for its grander purpose.”

“THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINS Laugh, I tell you And you will turn back The hands of time. Smile, I tell you And you will reflect The face of the divine. Sing, I tell you And all the angels will sing with you! Cry, I tell you And the reflections found in your pool of tears - Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterday To guide you through the fears of tomorrow.”

“It is incumbent upon us to list you your fears lest you forget them: that of being needy; of being clingy; of being odd; of being invisible; of being visible; of being shamed; of being shunned; of being deceived; of being bullied, of being abandoned; of being hit; of being talked about; of being pitied; of being mocked; of being thought both "child" and at the same time "old woman"; of anger; of others; of making mistakes; of knowing instinctively; of sadness; of loneliness; of failure; of loss; of love; of death. If not death, then of living - of the body, its needs, its bits, its daring bits, its unwanted bits. Then the shudders, the ripples, our legs turning to pulp because of those shudders and ripples. On a scale of one to ten, nine and nine-tenths of us believe in the loss of our power and in succumbing to weakness, also in the slyness of others. In instability too, we believe. Nine and nine-tenths of us think we are spied upon, that we replay old trauma, that we are tight and unhappy and numb in our facial expression. These are our fears, Dear Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie. Note them please. Remember these points please. Susannah, oh our Susannah. We are afraid.”

“[The Gaze of an Invisible Stranger] In western Europe and north America In the cities of cruelty, racism, freedom & democracy, Cities of exile and alienation, You see many young people Who’d rather die than greet a stranger, You observe how they master the art of ignoring And not acknowledging the humanity of anyone Who is not their height and weight Whose features, skin color, and eyes are different than theirs… In return, you observe cities filled with older people Who delight at a nod or greeting from any stranger Who are hungry for the slightest kind human touch From any by passerby… Making you, the Invisible Stranger, wonder: Did these same elderly folks raise the young ones? Are they merely inheriting a world of their creation? Do the young ones realize The isolation, loneliness, and desolation awaiting them tomorrow? [Original poem published in Arabic on January 3, 2023, at ahewar.org]”

“It is extremely disturbing to live in a society that sees older people as a burden rather than rich experiences to benefit from and build upon. Older people can act as the memory that can help us make sense of what was, what is, and what could and should be. I see that in the U.S. older people are not only made invisible in a culture obsessed with youth and superficial physical appearances, but often their insights, experiences, and perspectives are dismissed as ‘nostalgic’ or as outright ‘ignorant’ using the ‘generational gap’ as a pretext.”

“Dat mule is liable tuh be dead befo' de week is out. You won't git no work outa him." "Didn't buy 'im fuh no work. I god, Ah bought dat varmint tuh let 'im rest. You didn't have gumption enough tuh do it." A respectful silence fell on the place. Sam looked at Joe and said, "Dat's a new idea 'bout varmints, Mayor Starks. But Ah laks it mah ownself. It's uh noble thing you done." Everybody agreed with that.”

“He had lived a man's life, and now it was at an end, and what had he to show for it? Two horses and a few fixin's and a letter of credit for three hundred and forty-three dollars. That was all, unless you counted the way he had felt about living and the fun he had had while time ran along unnoticed. It had been rich doings, except that he wondered at the last, seeing everything behind him and nothing ahead. It was strange about time: it slipped under a man like quiet water, soft and unheeded but taking a part of him with every drop - a little quickness of the muscles, a little sharpness of the eye, a little of his youngness, until by and by he found it had taken the best of him almost unbeknownst. He wanted to fight it then, to hold it back, to catch what had been borne away. It wasn't that he minded going under, it wasn't that he was afraid to die and rot and forget and be forgotten; it was that things were lost to him more and more - the happy feeling, the strong doing, the fresh taste for things like drink and women and danger, the friends he had fought and funned with, the notion that each new day would be better than the last, good as the last one was. A man's later life was all a long losing, of friends and fun and hope, until at last time took the mite that was left of him and so closed the score.”