Getting Older Quotes

“You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman–Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass: Embracing Singleness with Confidence

“I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.”
― George Carlin

“Ageing is nothing to be ashamed of
Especially when the entire race is in it together
Although sometimes it seems that she alone among her friends wants to celebrate getting older
Because it’s such a privilege to not die prematurely”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“There comes a moment in your life when you realize that no matter how hard you try, you're never going to be fluent in Spanish. Or go on that African safari you've read about since you were a kid. Or be as excited as you used to be about catching fireflies. I keep trying to find my answer to life - and it gets more elusive the older I get.”
― Kim Gruenenfelder, A Total Waste of Makeup

“So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“The body fades. A leader who would last relies on more.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Those times are over and gone, and good-riddance to them, too. We were hopelessly high-spirited. Now we're the thick-waisted generation, dragging along our children behind us and carrying our parents on our backs. And we're in charge, while the figures who used to command our respect are wasting away.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“I put a thong on a few months ago trying to be sexy. I've been looking for it but ain't seen it since.”
― Tyler Perry, Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life

“The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.”
― Núria Añó

“His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. He ought to chase them out, sweep the premises clean. But he does not care to do so, or does not care enough"(72).”
― J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace

“When you get to a certain age you find that other people’s opinions don’t really matter anymore, and you get kind of uncomfortable with your place in modern life.”
― Noel Gallagher

“A woman sat alone at her dining table, reading and drinking a cocktail. It’d be such a relief to be older already, unburdened by the pressure to leverage your ever-fleeting beauty for whatever.”
― Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

“Getting older makes you no wiser,
but number of lessons that learned.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“One thing in our favor: some of this “becoming kinder” happens naturally, with age. It might be a simple matter of attrition: as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish--how illogical, really. We come to love certain other people and are thereby counterinstructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be. We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now). Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet Hayden Carruth said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was mostly Love, now.”
― George Saunders, Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness

“As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn't know how to express them, but rather it didn't know what to express.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“One of the advantages to getting older, though: while you might not change all that much, you at least got to know yourself. The real you, minus the bullshit and wishful thinking.”
― Edward W. Robertson, The Breakers Series: Books 4-6

“All of a sudden you may realise that you are no longer young! And at that moment, you must also realise that by refusing getting old you can catch a chance to continue to be young!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Besides,’ continued Julian, ‘you can slam down a phone like that. You can’t slam down a mobile. Imagine, a whole generation who’ll never know the joy of slamming down a phone.”
― Clare Pooley, The Authenticity Project

“Once we’ve grown used to the weight of loss and the impermanence of everything, something shifts.”
― Jane Tara, Tilda Is Visible

“When I was young, I wanted to be knowledgeable, but as I got older, I wanted to be wise. Wise people don’t just possess information; they possess a compassionate understanding of other people. They know about life.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Getting older happens suddenly. It's like swimming out to sea and realising that the shore you're making for isn't the shore where you started out.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Gap of Time

“It was in the realm of his humor, and Carney had doubtless laughed. You get older and the old jokes grow less funny.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“As for friends, they are fewer and dearer,
and the ones who remain seem also to be climbing mountains
in various ways, though we dream we will meet at the top.
Will you be there?”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

“Two who are Mostly Good,
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“My last defense
Is the present tense.

It little hurts me now to know
I shall not go

Cathedral-hunting in Spain
Nor cherrying in Michigan or Maine.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

“At fifty, we're so fragile,
a feather...”
― Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead

“That healthy glow of youth fades into the dusk of old age,
a child's dangling tufts transformed in a trice to white hair.

A single lifetime, and so many things to wound this heart:
if you don't enter the empty gate--where will you get free?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“In these twilight years, I love tranquility
alone. Mind free of all ten thousand affairs,

self-regard free of all those grand schemes,
I return to my old forest, knowing empty.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“After so many years, I'm suddenly old,
and each day my hair turns whiter still,

but wandering here, a glance between
all heaven and earth, who stays long?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Same as ever. Nothing much changed, old
friend. Why grieve over a timeworn face?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei