Aging Wisdom Quotes & Sayings

I've never
stopped wanting to cross
the equator, or touch an elk's
horns, or sing Tosca or screw
James Dean in a field of wheat.
To hell with wisdom. They're all wrong:
I'll never be through with my life. — Rita Dove

Age is wisdom if one has lived ones life properly. — Miriam Makeba

In my personal life, especially as I am aging, I find that the biggest mistakes I make and the biggest risks I run all result form mindless hurrying. — Edgar H Schein

I want to savor the aging process. As you get older, you trade your innocence for wisdom and the wisdom is your reward. — Kathy Mattea

The four signs of aging "Courage, Strength, Wisdom & I don't remember... — Anne Reese

The answer, usually, is no. Wisdom is a quality that defies easy definition but psychologists who study aging have found that some of its components - judgment, emotional regulation - do improve with age in most people, consciously or not. Of course there is a subset of people out there who are sitting in their rocking chairs, spewing hate, but my guess is that these people weren't very pleasant to begin with, ... The reality is that the data are fairly convincing that people as they get older become more positive and less self-absorbed. — James W. Pennebaker

Wisdom is the reward for surviving our own stupidity. — Brian Rathbone

We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly. — Ray Bradbury

The older I get, the less I know. It's wonderful--it makes the world so spacious. — Swami Chetanananda

The old continued to have one resurgence of foolishness after another, until the organism gave out altogether. — Saul Bellow

Wisdom comes with winters — Oscar Wilde

What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you've hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It's supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future. — Meghan Daum

There is something the child sees that he does not see; something the child hears that he does not hear; and this something is the most important thing of all. Because he does not understand it, his understanding is more childish than the child's and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face, and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling the knots. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I experience the age I am now as an age at which I must ensure that I already am what I insist or believe I am going to be. — Justin Smith

De Grey describes his goal as "engineered negligible senescence" - stopping the body and brain from becoming more frail and disease-prone as it grows older.18 As he explains, "All the core knowledge needed to develop engineered negligible senescence is already in our possession - it mainly just needs to be pieced together."19 De Grey believes we'll demonstrate "robustly rejuvenated" mice - mice that are functionally younger than before being treated and with the life extension to prove it - within ten years, and he points out that this achievement will have a dramatic effect on public opinion. Demonstrating that we can reverse the aging process in an animal that shares 99 percent of our genes will profoundly challenge the common wisdom that aging and death are inevitable. Once robust rejuvenation is confirmed in an animal, there will be enormous competitive pressure to translate these results into human therapies, which should appear five to ten years later. — Ray Kurzweil

Let us not be bored — Joe Buberger

The only things that old age comes standard with: grey hair and wrinkles. Wisdom and intellect are earned. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If you happen to be white in a white country; pretty according to the dictates of fashion; rich in a country where money is adored, it's almost impossible to grow up and to grow up honest inside. It is almost impossible. Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging. But to grow up, to take responsibility for the time you take up, and the space you occupy, to honor every living person for his or her humanity, that is to grow up. — Maya Angelou

They had all grown older, but he still did not feel he had wisdom to go with his aging. — Michael Ondaatje

I have decided that I shan't sweat the small stuff. Sense and sensibility will, I assume, come in their own time. If indeed they ought to come. And in the meantime, I shall continue to work my ass off ... and whenever the opportunity arises ... dance my ass off ... As someone very smart once wrote, 'Those who were seen dancing were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music'. — Amy Mowafi

The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time. — Dante Alighieri

Aging is a staircase - the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards. — Jane Fonda

You get tired of always wondering anew why life has to take the place of youth. — Gary Lutz

Always count your blessings, even if you have to count them through your tears — Eleanor Brownn

If you're blessed enough to grow older, which is how I look at aging, there's so much wisdom to be gained from people who are celebrating the process with vibrancy and vigor and grace. — Oprah Winfrey

I wear my wrinkles like battle scars, having earned every last one slaying life's dragons. They boast of my victories and some defeats while their beauty is a wealth of wisdom gained. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi) — Eve Ensler

These wrinkles are the hands of time,
The journeys I've been on
They've seen me through a thousand days,
And ev'ry victory won

These fragile hands, With exposed bones,
Are not a fearful sight
But rather, they, my faithful partners,
Rocked babies through the night

These eyes are weak, They see much less,
Than yours they've seen much more
They've guided me through birth, through death,
Through grief, through hurt, through war

These ears can hear so very little,
Yet they've learned to listen much
They perk up not for gossip now,
But for a heart to touch

Those younger often look my way,
With pity looks to give
Yet this old body doesn't mean I am dying,
But rather, that I have lived — Emily Nelson

Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden.She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is. (p.88) — Rabih Alameddine

An old person knows what it's like to be young, but a young person doesn't know what it's like to be old. There's no substitute for life experience. — Eleanor Brownn

This is an example of what Jung called "the regressive restoration of the persona," namely, the re-identification with a former position, role, ideology because it offers a predictable content, security, and script. In the face of the new and uncertain, we often return to the old place, which is why we so often stop growing. (It has become clear to me, for example, that aging itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities. — James Hollis

We can never skip growing old. As we grow older, we understand old things and things of old times better! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Although generally our sight diminishes with age; I submit that our vision improves. The older we get, the more clearly we see our life's decisions played out to their logical conclusions. — David C. Maloney

The easy path of aging is to become a thick-skinned, unbudging curmudgeon, a battle-ax. To grow soft and sweet is the harder way. — James Hillman

I'm not opposed to aging - even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I'm proud of my age. I'm proud that I've survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I'll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind ... for however long it lasts. — Donna Lynn Hope

It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate? — Nora Ephron

Entire years had passed when he was rich enough in time to disregard the loose change of a minute, but now he obsessed over each one, this minute, the next minute, the one following, all of which were different terms for the same illusion. — Anthony Marra

As an elder I mistrust the wisdom of age. — Mason Cooley

-I was young! I made a mistake, okay! Haven't you ever made a mistake?
-I'm old! Of course I've made mistakes, you stupid little shit! — Drea Damara

There is only one thing age can give you, and that is wisdom. — S.I. Hayakawa

In short, immaturity is spoiled. And what is spoiled doesn't ripen. It goes bad early, gets bitter and withers on the vine. — Gina Barreca

Don't be afraid. Change is such a beautiful thing, said the Butterfly. — Sabrina Newby

Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas. — Alain De Botton

it seems to me that aging, wisdom, and wondering are synonymous. The older we grow, the more likely we are to reject the simple answers. — Brandon Sanderson

You always thought older people were wiser. It's not that. It's just that our relatives are dead and we're able to speak freely. — Ariel Gore

I think [aging] has nothing to recommend it. You don't gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you'd trade all of that for being 35 again. — Woody Allen

Youth is marked by a breathtaking novelty that diminishes with each year of age - until life becomes a delusive struggle to break routines, escape the ordinary, and rediscover the joy of discovery. — Zack Love

Never had anyone said, Listen. Life is short. Pretend your body is still in its twenties. Jump for the brass ring. Swing for those bleachers. Dive into the deep end of the pool. Act like a fool if you must, but at least *live*. — Cathie Pelletier

The days before, even the score of what you are filled in with today. What colour are you, the tangled hues of years gone by that affected you? — Juliet Castle

Children need the wisdom of their elders; the aging need the encouragement of a child's exuberance. — Corrie Ten Boom

(It has become clear to me, for example, that aging itself does not bring wisdom. It often brings regression to childishness, dependency, and bitterness over lost opportunities. Only those who are still intellectually, emotionally, spiritually growing inherit the richness of aging.) — James Hollis

The curse of mortality. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then, through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constitutions deteriorate. Beauty withers. Organs quit. You remember yourself in your prime, and wonder where that person went. As your wisdom and experience are peaking, your traitorous body becomes a prison. — Brandon Mull

My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you? — Arthur Rimbaud

Graceful aging starts by leveling the playing field between emotional landmines and physical grievances. — Auliq Ice

You've climbed too many mountains and crossed too many rivers to stop and turn back now. — Eleanor Brownn