73 Inspiring Quotes On Aging

As we journey through the different stages of life, aging becomes a profound and universal experience filled with wisdom, growth, and transformation. It's a natural part of life's cycle that offers opportunities for reflection and the cultivation of a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Whether you're looking for words of encouragement, a boost of motivation, or a moment of reflection, our curated collection of 73 inspiring quotes on aging will offer insights and a fresh perspective. Join us as we explore thoughts from thinkers, writers, and leaders who celebrate the beauty and significance of growing older.

1. “When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.” - George Burns

2. “Just remember, when you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.” - Charles Schultz

3. “Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.” - Mark Twain

4. “One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.” - Oscar Wilde

5. “I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and a progressive religious experience.” - Shelley Winters

6. “In my dreams, I never have an age.” - Madeleine L'Engle

7. “You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.” - Garrison Keillor

8. “Some guy said to me: Don't you think you're too old to sing rock n' roll?I said: You'd better check with Mick Jagger.” - Cher

9. “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is.” - Ellen DeGeneres

10. “Twenty-three is old. It's almost 25, which is like almost mid-20s.” - Jessica Simpson

11. “At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy, it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.” - Mark Haddon

12. “I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.From the back pages” - Bob Dylan

13. “She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die... I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe.” - Daphne du Maurier

14. “I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.” - Henri Frédéric Amiel

15. “Childhood and adulthood were not factors of age but states of mind.” - Alex Shakar

16. “Old people really do have a secret though. You wanna know what it is? Luck.” - Craig Ferguson

17. “Just 'cause there's snow on the roof doesn't mean there's not a fire inside.” - Bonnie Hunt

18. “It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.” - Charles Frazier

19. “Youthfulness is about how you live not when you were born.” - Karl Lagerfeld

20. “With all due respect, if you’re forty-three, then I’m a fetus.” - David Levithan

21. “Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.” - Chuck Palahniuk

22. “I think as you get older you become more of who you always were. You become a more concentrated version of yourself. You really learn who you are, why you're unique, who you've always been [...] There's a winnowing away of nonessentials, sometimes essentials, it's true, but what remains is your core, your essence, the real 'you,' and you realize you're still you without what you've lost as long as you still have all your marbles--or most of them anyway.” - Stacey McGlynn

23. “The dusty tombs of long-dead exorcist priests lay in the alcoves below, surmounted by stone effigies, the features eroded by the passing of time and the reverent caresses of their grateful parishioners, a reminder, she knew all too well, of the brevity of life.” - Sarah Ash

24. “Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.” - C.S. Lewis

25. “The best thing about being 40 is that you can appreciate 25-year-old men more.” - Colleen McCullough

26. “What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew” - Robert Browning

27. “Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir.'- All my old loves will be returned to me” - Carolyn Turgeon

28. “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

29. “What can ever equal the memory of being young together?” - Michael Stein

30. “Twenty-seven.”His brow puckered, and he blinked over at her. “Twenty-seven hundred years, right?”If he were speaking to Taliyah, yes. “No. Just twenty-seven plain, ordinary years.”“You don’t mean human years, do you?”“No. I mean dog years,” she said dryly, then pressed her lips together. Where was the filter that was usually poised over her mouth? Strider didn’t seem to mind, though. Rather, he seemed stupefied. Would Sabin have had the same reaction were he awake? “What’s so hard to believe about my age?” As the question echoed between them, a thought occurred to her and she blanched. “Do I look ancient?”“No, no. Of course not. But you’re immortal. Powerful.” - Gena Showalter

31. “Nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere.(No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.)” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

32. “Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.” - Arthur Golden

33. “Age is of no importance unless you’re a cheese.” - Billie Burke

34. “You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however much he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fortitude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue.” - Patrick O'Brian

35. “I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.” - Louise Penny

36. “You must find a boy your own age. Someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered. Someone whose fingers are a poem.” - Janet Fitch

37. “when you live forever and don't age, it gives you time to hope” - Laurell K. Hamilton

38. “Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character.” - Clarence Day

39. “Nat: Maybe you broke something.Midge: I know. Never fall down, never fall down!Nat: Ah, it's nothing. I fall down every morning. I get up, I have a cup of coffee, I fall down. That's the system. Two years old, you stand up and then BOOM! seventy years later, you fall down again.” - Herb Gardner

40. “Even from a very early age, I knew I didn't want to miss out on anything life had to offer just because it might be considered dangerous.” - Nicole Kidman

41. “Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.” - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

42. “A wealth of experience and wisdom doesn't have to be a dead giveaway to your increasing years. The spin you put on it is what will keep you young. Don't let it make you bitter. Learn from it, and let it make you better.” - Jayleigh Cape

43. “It's all about being in control of myself as an older woman who lives alone, and it's all about how I am going to do what I have to do to be as strong as I can be and be confident that I can do what I need to do as an older person. [p. 62]” - MARY CATHERINE BATESON

44. “After all, most of us have lived lives based on commitments made without any way of knowing where they would lead. The uncertainty is an essential element in commitment, the acceptance of consequences an essential element in fidelity. [p. 80]” - MARY CATHERINE BATESON

45. “You read any Greek myths, puppy? The one about the gorgon Medusa, particularly? I used to wonder what could be so terrible that you couldn't survive even looking at it.Until I got a little older and I figured out the obvious answer.Everything.” - Mike Carey & Peter Gross

46. “And there was this sweet-looking little old lady with her white hair in a bun and everything, the typical grandmother type, and she was swearing her head off. I guess Alzheimer's had brought out her inner sailor.” - Vivian Vande Velde

47. “Life is all but a dream we will soon wake up to and be 7 years old again” - Kira Jeffries

48. “Though the face before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than thirty years, in perfect health and the first flush of ripened beauty, yet it bore stamped upon it a seal of unutterable experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion. Not even the slow smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth could hide the shadow of sin and sorrow. It shone even in the light of those glorious eyes, it was present in the air of majesty, and it seemed to say: 'Behold me, lovely as no woman was or is, undying and half-divine; memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand--evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.” - H. Rider Haggard

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

50. “I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more...” - Maurice Sendak

51. “Now and again, one could detect in a childless woman of a certain age the various characteristics of all the children she had never issued. Her body was haunted by the ghost of souls who hadn't lived yet. Premature ghosts. Half-ghosts. X's without Y's. Y's without X's. They applied at her womb and were denied, but, meant for her and no one else, they wouldn't go away. Like tiny ectoplasmic gophers, they hunkered in her tear ducts. They shone through her sighs. Often to her chagrin, they would soften the voice she used in the marketplace. When she spilled wine, it was their playful antics that jostled the glass. They called out her name in the bath or when she passed real children in the street. The spirit babies were everywhere her companions, and everywhere they left her lonesome - yet they no more bore her resentment than a seed resents uneaten fruit. Like pet gnats, like phosphorescence, like sighs on a string, they would follow her into eternity.” - Tom Robbins

52. “Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.” - Joe Abercrombie

53. “She was beautiful, but her youth, the very awkwardness of her age, prevented her from flaunting it.” - Richard J. O'Brien

54. “A man's life is all he has. When you're old, it's all you'll ever have.” - Miguel Syjuco

55. “Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.” - Dan Simmons

56. “My child, I know you're not a childBut I still see you running wildBetween those flowering trees.Your sparkling dreams, your silver laughYour wishes to the stars above Are just my memories.And in your eyes the oceanAnd in your eyes the seaThe waters frozen overWith your longing to be free.Yesterday you'd awokenTo a world incredibly old.This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.You had to kill this child, I know.To break the arrows and the bowTo shed your skin and change.The trees are flowering no moreThere's blood upon the tiles floorThis place is dark and strange.I see you standing in the stormHolding the curse of youthEach of you with your storyEach of you with your truth.Some words will never be spokenSome stories will never be told.This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.I didn't say the world was good.I hoped by now you understoodWhy I could never lie.I didn't promise you a thing. Don't ask my wintervoice for springJust spread your wings and fly.Though in the hidden gardenDown by the green green laneThe plant of love grows next toThe tree of hate and pain.So take my tears as a token.They'll keep you warm in the cold.This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.You've lived too long among usTo leave without a traceYou've lived too short to understandA thing about this place.Some of you just sit there smokingAnd some are already sold. This is the age you are brokenOr turned into gold.This is the age you are broken or turned into gold.” - Antonia Michaelis

57. “Those who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before the age of 40. More often, they do not strike their real pace until they are well beyond the age of 50.” - Napoleon Hill

58. “Son front, quoique peu ridé, semble porter le sceau d'une myriade d'années. Ses cheveux gris sont des archives du passé et ses yeux, plus gris encore, sont des sibylles de l'avenir.” - Edgar Allan Poe

59. “That's one of the things we learn as we grow older -- how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.” - L.M. Montgomery

60. “Do you remember what I forgot?” - Erica Goros

61. “Darkness does not age; nothing is always nothing” - Dejan Stojanovic

62. “It is very easy to grow tired at collecting; the period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on the attention. The picture is wide and colored and beautiful. But after an hour and a half the attention centers weary, the color fades, and the field is likely to narrow to an individual animal. Here one may observe his own world narrowed down until interest and, with it, observation, flicker and go out. And what if with age this weariness becomes permanent and observation dim out and not recover? Can this be what happens to so many men of science? Enthusiasm, interest, sharpness, dulled with a weariness until finally they retire into easy didacticism? With this weariness, this stultification of attention centers, perhaps there comes the pained and sad memory of what the old excitement was like, and regret might turn to envy of the men who still have it. Then out of the shell of didacticism, such a used-up man might attack the unwearied, and he would have in his hands proper weapons of attack. It does seem certain that to a wearied man an error in a mass of correct data wipes out all the correctness and is a focus for attack; whereas the unwearied man, in his energy and receptivity, might consider the little dross of error a by-product of his effort. These two may balance and produce a purer thing than either in the end. These two may be the stresses which hold up the structure, but it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die. We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared years before and never vary them again. Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tide pool—a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world. If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time. Then ecology has a synonym which is ALL.” - John Steinbeck

63. “I was a lot braver when I was eight.” - Claire Cook

64. “You are mortal. You age, you die. If that is not hell, pray tell me, what is?” - Cassandra Clare

65. “I am ashes where once I was fire...” - Lord Byron

66. “...summer softens lines that winter cruelly shows...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

67. “The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older.” - George Bernard Shaw

68. “I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release. Added to this (proh dolor! [O misery!]) the sight of my right eye — that eye whose labors (dare I say it) have had such glorious results — is for ever lost. That of the left, which was and is imperfect, is rendered null by continual weeping.” - Galileo Galilei

69. “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.” - Dan Simmons

70. “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?” - Dan Simmons

71. “If we are to use the words ‘childish’ and ‘infantile’ as terms of disapproval, we must make sure that they refer only to those characteristics of childhood which we become better and happier by outgrowing. Who in his sense would not keep, if he could, that tireless curiosity, that intensity of imagination, that facility of suspending disbelief, that unspoiled appetite, that readiness to wonder, to pity, and to admire?” - C.S. Lewis

72. “It was him, thirty years too old, twenty pounds too light, & forty watts too dim maybe, but him.” - Michael Chabon

73. “Loghain shook his head in disbelief. "Maker's breath, man, aren't you suppose to have some dignity? Somewhere?""Me? Dignity?""Being the supposed future King and such.""I think Rowan took my dignity."She snorted derisively, folding her arms. "There was nothing else worth having.” - David Gaider