38 Quotes About Ageing

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. . Margery Williams Bianco

Hardest of all, as one becomes older, is to accept that sapient remarks can be drawn from the most unwelcome or seemingly improbable sources, and that the apparently more trustworthy sources can lead one astray. Christopher Hitchens

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts. Unknown

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. . David Nicholls

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. Michael Bassey Johnson

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy-girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To live, to die, to overdose, to fall in a coma in the street.. it is all the same. It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death.. And they should! ..For they are in life. Roman Payne

Europe, the land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts. The land where the economy gets to stagger all over the continent. Unknown

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To live, to die, to overdose, to fall in a coma in the street.. it is all the same. It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death… And they should! ..For they are 'in' life. . Roman Payne

Eustasia Johannsen was ready. Anyone could see that. Everything about her ancient self gave evidence to it: Her skin, wrinkled and transparent... But mainly, it was her eyes. They were drawn into her face as if her memories occupied more of her sight than what was actually in front of her. Clare Vanderpool

The problem with memories is they get more valuable with time, and the places we keep them get weaker with age. Michael Xavier

I wonderif I should let my hair go greyso my advice will be better. Margaret Atwood

If people respect your age and not your personality, then it's time for you to do some urgent introspection. Amit Kalantri

Growing age can kill the beauty, not the style. Amit Kalantri

Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto everything you saw and made it brighter? Julian Barnes

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. Amanda Craig

We’re too old to be young. Caroline Kepnes

Not so many moons ago, he had been able to run to the summit of the temple without losing a single breath; however, now he felt like an old camel that laboured under a load of corn. Years pass so quickly, and the dreams of youth are lost forever. Alan Kinross

It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death... And they should! ...For they are in life. Roman Payne

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. Rose Macaulay

When the years are dying in the arms of your life, the earth is in pain moving around the sun. Munia Khan

You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. Michael Pritchard

You know you're old when you're watching Karate Kid and you realize you're more attracted to Mr. Miagi than Ralph Macchio. Hayley Linfield

When we age we shed many skins: ego, arrognace, dominance, self-opionated, unreliable, pessimism, rudeness, selfish, uncaring. .. Wow, it's good to be old! Stephen Richards

Doesn't seem quite real. It's not meaningful. I can't quite imagine myself being 73. That's the age my father was! [Laughter.] How can I be his age? It's weird. Don DeLillo

... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on. Julian Barnes

She looked at his face. So old and wrinkled. So beautiful and just right. R.J. Lawrence

Because I’ve gotten older, I worry that there will be a steep decline in my talent, but I promise not to let the same thing happen to my passion for writing. Pat Conroy

I'm forty-two, " he said. "That's eighty-four in musician years. Monica Wood

Unattached and aimless, these old men are always infatuated with little certainties and regularities such as those that ordered the life of Mr. Krupper as seen from outside. Habit is living. Anything unexpected reminds them of death.(" Hard Candy") Tennessee Williams

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. Philip K. Dick

...real age, as I came to see from the genuine pieces that passed through my hands, was variable, crooked, capricious, singing here and sullen there, warm asymmetrical streaks on a rosewood cabinet from where a slant of sun had struck it while the other side was as dark as the day it was cut. Donna Tartt

One Life With Many Names, Childhood, Boyhood, Manhood And Old, Then? Then! All Unknown, Uncertain Destination.... Muhammad Imran Hasan

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

Almost any age is better than twenty-two. David Rakoff

She has built her whole life on the foundation of beauty: each chiseled plane, each sloping dimple, each soft curve as crucial as keystones in the cathedral of her body. Nenia Campbell