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Aging Quotes

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Aging Quotes

“The cool thing about getting older, is that you have so much to look back on. If you take the time to reflect on your life journey to where you are now, you will be amazed at how many times “fate” caused you to make great decisions that lead you to where you are now.”

“He did not want to be young again -- that time had had particular and transcendent horrors -- but the thought of being any older filled him with panic. He could not imagine finding tranquility of soul in old age; if he could only be allowed to mark time for a while all might yet be well, one might suddenly achieve equilibrium, certainty, serenity. There would still be possibilities. Hopes.”

“I am thinking about the way that life can be so slippery; the way that a twelve-year-old girl looking into the mirror to count freckles reaches out toward herself and that reflection has turned into that of a woman on her wedding day, righting her veil. And how, when that bride blinks, she reopens her eyes to see a frazzled young mother trying to get lipstick on straight for the parent/teacher conference that starts in three minutes. And how after that young woman bends down to retrieve the wild-haired doll her daughter has left on the bathroom floor, she rises up to a forty-seven-year-old, looking into the mirror to count age spots.”

“My mother and I looked at each other then, full in the face, more frankly than we'd done since I was small. I realized with a jolt that I was taller than she was by at least half a foot. When on earth had that happened? The realization made me want to sit down on the stairs and cry. It seemed to signify something terrible about the world: something that couldn't - or mustn't- be put into words. And I could see, looking down into her startled, anxious face, that my mother felt exactly the same way.”

“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...”

“I have never felt myself to be ageing: on the contrary, I have always had the strange sensation as time passes that I am getting not older but younger. My body feels as though it has innocence as its destination. This is not, of course, a physical reality – I view the proof in the mirror with increasing puzzlement – but it is perhaps a psychological one that conscripts the body into its workings. It is as though I was born imprisoned in a block of stone from which it has been both a necessity and an obligation to free myself. The feeling of incarceration in what was pre-existing and inflexible works well enough, I suppose, as a paradigm for the contemporary woman’s struggle towards personal liberty. She might feel it politically, socially, linguistically, emotionally; I happen to have felt it physically. I am not free yet, by any means. It is laborious and slow, chipping away at that block. There would be a temptation to give up, were the feelings of claustrophobia and confinement less intense.”

“Evidence for this theory comes from the finding that every species seems to have a genetically determined maximum lifespan. While the average life expectancy for humans has increased, the maximum lifespan has remained stable (approximately 120 years). There is also research to suggest that at an early age, our genes trigger hormonal changes in the brain and regulate the cellular reproduction and repair process. At some point in the process, the genes that promote growth are 'switched off,' and those that promote aging are turned on. This leads to a steady decline in the functioning of the body until death occurs. One may see changes not only in physical functioning, but in the cognitive, emotional, and psychological domains as well.”

“It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do for any one of them.”

“My mother - Contained God itself A tarnished look of pain A hand clutching her heart A love we can not name A fog or a smoke An infinite thirst for life (But the wing is dead under the frost.) My mother - Is an uncertain form She gets lost when she walks And we sit in the valley And I shelter her to my love My mother Is a broken sky That exhales day and night Its beauty. My mother - Is the scent of a hundred roses And the suffering of so many things My mother Is no more than a dream - I suppose Of those who are said lips closed And behind her veil She sleeps - my mother - And her star Do not doubt anymore of its light.”

“I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won't, that we are different. As a child I thought that I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old?”

“This was my first experience of being too old. I had not always gotten exactly what I had wanted—men had been unwilling to leave their wives for me or to do more than flirt—but even in these humbling cases I hadn’t questioned my right to feel desire. Now suddenly my lust was uncouth, inappropriate. I was powerful and interesting, perhaps funny and unique; I took him seriously in a way he wasn’t used to—but he was not jerking off to me. Just a few years earlier, at forty or forty-two, I would have been a contender, but now it was too late. And he was just the first one. From now on this would be the norm. And not just with men younger than me, but with all men. I would never get what I wanted anymore, man-wise.”

“Don't worry about your orgasm. Don't care about it. You've had a million orgasms in your life. Want only this. Want only total obliteration. In this way too, you are returning to the girl you were -- the girl who didn't care about orgasms, but just wanted to fuck, and fuck, and fuck, without even knowing why. Those adult years of dutifully chasing clitoral orgasms -- they seem alien in retrospect. Now you just want sensation, less definable than orgasm, and weirdly more satisfying, more total.”

“I was young at Myna, that first time. When had the change come? He had retreated to here, to Collegium, to spin his awkward webs of intrigue and to lecture at the College. Then, years on, the call had come for action. He had gone to that chest in which he stored his youth and found that, like some armour long unworn, it had rusted away. He tried to tell himself that this was not like the grumbling of any other man who finds the prime of his life behind him. I need my youth and strength now, as never before. A shame that one could no husband time until one needed it. All his thoughts rang hollow. He was past his best and that was the thorn that would not be plucked from his side. He was no different from any tradesman or scholar who, during a life of indolence, pauses partway up the stairs to think, This was not so hard, yesterday.”

“For one month in 2018, I conducted a thought experiment. Everywhere I went, I imagined the people I saw without hair dye or implants or comb-overs. The more I looked, the more I found - after all, men's first gray hairs generally appear at thirty, and women get their first, on average, by thirty-five. People from all ethnic groups. People who looked rich and people who looked poor. People who were adults, middle-aged, senior, old, elderly, and aged. Everywhere I looked (including in the mirror), I saw people pretending to be something other than what they were. How can it be that we have created a society where a majority of adults and elders feel ashamed of their basic identity? And if we are pretending to be something we are not, how can we be surprised or disappointed when others disparage what we are?”