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533584b I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end. life inifinity old-age Simone de Beauvoir
e2a4df6 "The Little Boy and the Old Man Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon." Said the old man, "I do that too." The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants." I do that too," laughed the little old man. Said the little boy, "I often cry." The old man nodded, "So do I." But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me." youth poetry old-age Shel Silverstein
5ff57f5 I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. dissipation old-age J.R.R. Tolkien
74986c2 "Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess: Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity. Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends. Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains -- they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing. I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong. Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint -- it is so hard to live with some of them -- but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces. prayer humility patience old-age Margot Benary-Isbert
db61df0 Our lives can't be measured by our final years, of this I am sure. life judgement old-age Nicholas Sparks
849e50a It`s not how old you are, it`s how you are old. living inspirational aging-gracefully old-age Jules Renard
a3a19f6 The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude. solitude old-age Gabriel García Márquez
38251b7 People don't love each other at our age, Marthe--they please each other, that's all. Later on, when you're old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That's all it is. old-age Albert Camus
dcd5d21 "I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose." old-age Margaret Atwood
c72092e I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together. running old-age Haruki Murakami
0c0c763 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... reading death old-age aging Edward Gorey
34d8f3e "song of elli (old age) "What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain What is gone is gone... What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand - What is gone is gone... Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone. What is true, no two men know - What is gone is gone... Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose - What is gone is gone." -- peter-s-beagle song-of-elli-old-age-elli-s-song the-last-unicorn old-age Peter S. Beagle
fd4867a "song of elli (old age) "What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain What is gone is gone... What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand - What is gone is gone... Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone. What is true, no two men know - What is gone is gone... Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose - What is gone is gone." peter-s-beagle song-of-elli-old-age-elli-s-song the-last-unicorn old-age Peter S. Beagle
9e8869d If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean--even if it did build muscle--whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period... the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities. money opportunity youth women life philosophy conundrums groundhog-day self-contradiction tiresias wishful-thinking parents desire old-age Christopher Hitchens
b085181 "Everybody dies. There's nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God. (Although there's no question a belief in God would come in handy. It would be great to think there's a plan, and that everything happens for a reason. I don't happen to believe that. And every time one of my friends says to me, "Everything happens for a reason," I would like to smack her.)" old-age Nora Ephron
9a4f933 If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves. life old-age John Irving
fe55068 "Seven Ages: first puking and mewling Then very pissed-off with your schooling Then fucks, and then fights youth limerick seven-ages-of-man middle-age william-shakespeare old-age Robert Conquest
65fa813 At my age, if I make it up, it's still an old saying. old-sayings old-age Robert Jordan
70679e0 He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life. old-age Ray Bradbury
21d6ec8 Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised. tragedy youth old-age Julian Barnes
d48c653 When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation? Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute? time writing death life charles-dickens regret writers old-age Dan Simmons
d3f0b2e 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. wisdom sources henry-kissinger ageing old-age Christopher Hitchens
e150b74 Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you? study-in-character rudeness old-age Yann Martel
42d9f91 "Oh, once you've been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn't want you back." Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. "We--by whom I mean anyone over sixty--commit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman's memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight." life-experience old-age David Mitchell
e17f6e2 "For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty." mothers neglect sentimentality parents old-age William S. Burroughs
79d6e94 According to Tobias, women hang around longer because they're less capable of indignation and better at being humiliated, for what is old age but one long string of indignities? What person of integrity would put up with it? integrity men women indignities old-age Margaret Atwood
af99b2f ...that's what old people are here for, -- else their experience is of little use. louisa-may-alcott old-age Louisa May Alcott
675c0e5 How terrible, Jack thought, to be old and know that your life has been wasted. lifes-work old-age Ken Follett
b713ac9 "There are too many steps in this castle, and it seems to me they add a few every night, just to vex me" - Maester Cressen" stairs steps lazy old-age George R.R. Martin
a9053d2 ... and I experienced the bitter helplessness of a taunted old man dying to be whole again. wholeness old-age Philip Roth
52330aa She is here. And she comes to you, and she does not speak, and the others do not notice her, and she takes your hand, and you ready yourself to die, eyes open, aware this is all an illusion, a last aroma cast up by the chemical stew that is your brain, which will soon cease to function, ad there will be nothing, and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, you have loved your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your son and, yes, your ex-wife and you have loved the pretty girl, you have been beyond yourself, and so you have courage, and you have dignity, and you have calmness in the face of terror, and awe, and the pretty girl holds your hand, and you contain her, and this book, and me writing it, and I too contain you, who may not even be born, you inside me inside you, though not in a creepy way, and so may you, may I, may we, so may all of us confront the end. death life love inspirational poignant self-help old-age Mohsin Hamid
b77e0f7 What most people fear when they think of old age is the inability to make new friends. If one ever had the faculty of making friends one never loses it however old one grows. Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer. love old-age Henry Miller
4e3c794 Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears. worries fears old-age Graham Greene
ca14718 At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom - the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow. young-at-heart old-age Herman Melville
53c333d The hands were ivory-coloured, the skin finely wrinkled everywhere, like the crust on a pool of wax, and under it appreared livid bruises, arthritic nodes, irregular tea-brown stains. ...The flesh under the horny nails was candlvwax-coloured, and bloodless. old-age A.S. Byatt
ee9ace2 The best life you can have as you get into old age is good food, good teeth to eat it with, and few worries when you go to bed at night. life old-age Amy Tan
4a70be0 "I was quite a looker in my time," she said. Was she reading his mind, or only being smart, to know she must be hideous? "Oh, had they invented time as long ago as that?" old-age Gregory Maguire
6f062af A person in her twenties has been a child for most of her life, but as time goes by that portion that is childhood becomes smaller and smaller, more and more distant, more and more faded, though they say at the end of life the beginning returns with renewed vividness, as though you had sailed all the way around the world and were going back into the darkness from which you came. travel youth memory old-age nostalgia Rebecca Solnit
e837c10 They rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him. teenagers old-age Khaled Hosseini
167fec8 It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it's an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, 'How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn't life a play? Don't I play it well? old-age Ray Bradbury
2cc44df I blushed. You haven't seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy, spotty fifteen-year-old. And because it's rarer, it sends the blusher tumbling back to that time when life felt like nothing more than one long sequence of embarrassments. memory old-age Julian Barnes
9a47fcd After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken. body old-age Margaret Atwood
08d9a93 It wasn't right that you could only understand your parents' pain once you'd experienced the things they had, and by then they were gone. pain life-lessons wisdom maturity growing-up parenting knowledge parenthood old-age J. Courtney Sullivan
80b5de9 I am deep in my willed habits. From the outside, I suppose I look like an unoccupied house with one unconvincing night-light left on. Any burglar could look through my curtains and conclude I am empty. But he would be mistaken. Under that one light unstirred by movement or shadows there is a man at work, and as long as I am at work I am not a candidate for Menlo Park, or that terminal facility they cynically call a convalescent hospital, or a pine box. My habits and the unchanging season sustain me. Evil is what questions and disrupts. work emptiness habits old-age evil habit Wallace Stegner
2be3d4c One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly. folly old-age Glen Cook
3e26939 The day before the Queen's Ball, Father had a visitor--a very young girl with literary aspirations, someone Lord Lytton had recommended visit Father and sent over-and while Father was explaining to her the enjoyment he was having in writing this Drood book for serialisation, this upstart of a girl had the temerity to ask, 'But suppose you died before all the book was written?' [...] He spoke very softly in his kindest voice and said to her, 'One can only work on, you know--work while it is day. writing work death charles-dickens old-age Dan Simmons
b5b4580 Creyo por primera vez entender por que se decia que la vida es sueno: si uno vive bastante, los hechos de su vida, como los de un sueno, su vuelven incomunicables porque a nadie interesan. old-age Adolfo Bioy Casares
f0b1480 Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself. crying lonely old-age Jean Rhys
2889a36 But Saeed's father was thinking also of the future, even though he did not say this to Saeed, for he feared that if he said this to his son that his son might not go, and he knew above all else that his son must go, and what he did not say was that he had come to that point in a parent's life when, if a flood arrives, one knows one must let go of one's child, contrary to all the instincts one had when one was younger, because holding on can no longer offer the child protection, it can only pull the child down, and threaten them with drowning, for the child is now stronger than the parent, and the circumstances are such that the utmost of strength is required, and the arc of a child's life only appears for a while to match the arc of a parent's, in reality one sits atop the other, a hill atop a hill, a curve atop a curve, and Saeed's father's arc now needed to curve lower, while his son's still curved higher, for with an old man hampering them these two young people were simply less likely to survive. old son old-age Mohsin Hamid
b86c621 He had perhaps seen fifty springs and was therefore already very old, but his tireless body moved with an agility I myself often lacked. fifty-years-old old-age Umberto Eco
0232550 Godfrey's wife Charmian sat with her eyes closed, attempting to put her thoughts into alphabetical order which Godfrey had told her was better than no order at all, since she now had grasp of neither logic nor chronology. old-age Muriel Spark
1be3811 don't say you'se ole. You'se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo' ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo' young girl days to spend wid me. young-at-heart old-age Zora Neale Hurston
233a9e8 Old age had distilled her down to her essence. humanity life-lessons life wisdom essence elderly old-people womanhood old-age J. Courtney Sullivan
2a63450 Old age is the new childhood. old-age Hanif Kureishi
9617184 Everything is old, here. We are old - the Masters. travel wisdom experienced old-age Ursula K. Le Guin
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