Inspirational Aging Quotes & Sayings

Your best is good enough. — Vivian E. Greenberg

Never give up hope. If you do, you'll be dead already.
Dementia Patient, Rose from The Inspired Caregiver — Peggi Speers

What if you offered your body love instead of criticism? What if you offered it some compassion instead of insults? What if you saw the decades of abuse, wear-and-tear, and aging as cause for more love instead of less? What if you acknowledged the thousands of miles it has trekked through this rough and wild world and you felt nothing but appreciation and love for all it has withstood for you? What if you offered it more sleep, more hot baths, better foods, healthy exercise, fun activities, and more rest? What if you gave it more love? What if you stopped punishing it for belonging to you? — Emily Maroutian

Your lingering presence erodes me. Heartbeat by heartbeat. Cell by aging cell. Washing away any sense of self I ever had. Intruding into a nothingness I've struggled to find the pieces to fill. A jar filled with stones, piled with pebbles, topped with sand, only to be left with the knowledge that water, with enough time and persistence, has the power to wash it all away.
Your name is on my lips. Frozen. A familiar cadence of syllables that once soothed me.
A name I can't speak. Can't think of.
Not on this shore, at our lake. Not on this day. When only a year ago, with a foreshadowing that is now ice in my veins, you stood next to me, in this jacket, your hand in mine, so warm, and stared out at this expanse and whispered in awe, This is what a cold lake looks like. — S.A. McAuley

It's odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn't know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I invented. And finally I was what I was again ... Anna Quindlen — Anna Quindlen

The water doesn't know how old you are. — Dara Torres

Real vision dies only when life dies. Once we live, we hope, we yearn for and we aspire to have something! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I'm excited about the aging process. I'm more interested in women who aren't perfect. They're more compelling — Emma Watson

You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning . Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five. — Mitch Albom

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

[Beveridge] was a driven man, right to the end; his last words, enunciated clearly from his death bed at the age of eighty-four, showed that the aging social reformer was still haunted by the memory of those sick men on the East London streets. 'I have a thousand things to do,' he said, and died. — T.R. Reid

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

By loving you more, you love the person you are caring for more. — Peggi Speers

Parenting, similar to aging, is not for the faint of heart. It is a sacred journey, filled with learning experiences for both parties, not all of which are easy. This journey requires that we are brave, honest, noble and resilient. Love for our children carries us through this journey and encourages us to feel more, give more, and be more than we ever thought we were capable of. — Jeanmarie Wilson

Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy. — Viktor E. Frankl

She looked not like a mother in her thirties, but like the girl he had fallen in love with, and he loved her still. She would always be that girl to him, no matter what happened. That was love, after all, the ability to see one's youthful beloved in the aging stranger with her face. He would always love her, he thought. He was made to love her. — Melissa De La Cruz

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

Suddenly it seemed to me that I looked back from a great distance on that smile and saw it all again - the smile and the day, the whole sunny, sad, funny, wonderful day and all the days that we had spent here together. What was I going to do when such days came no more? There could not be many; for we were a family growing old. And how would I learn to live without these people? I who needed them so little that I could stay away all year - what should I do without them? — Jetta Carleton

Many people define beauty as skin deep, but I've found the beauty in physical and superficial changes that continue throughout the life of a woman. — Alyscia Cunningham

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

It's my birthday, by the way, and as of 2:05 this morning (the time of my birth in the middle of a snow storm on the Fort Dix army base in New Jersey) I'm 52 years old. I decided to say that because there's such pressure in our culture for women ... well, for everybody ... to stay perpetually young. And that's never going to change if we (women especially) don't embrace, enjoy, and take pride in each and every age that we pass through. I'm not young, I'm half a century old, and grateful to have made it this far. And I have this to say to the young women coming on behind me: 52 feels pretty damn good! — Terri Windling

Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive, that you understand going to die, and you live a better life because of it. — Mitch Albom

Getting older is inevitable--being old is a choice. — Cheryl L. Ilov

Growth is there for everybody, but it is not everybody who 'grows'! So many people grow to stop growing, but aging never stops for mankind until we come to the ebb of our days! Grow in something as you grow and leave something unique! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It's not how old you are, it's how you are old. — Jules Renard

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

Throughout their lifetime, most women learn to be uncomfortable with their physical appearance. They create a
mask of makeup that is intended to "fix" their "imperfections." They identify so much with this mask they reject their true beauty.
Feminine Transitions encourages women to remove their masks and love their true selves, completely. — Alyscia Cunningham

We don't ask when people age out of singing, or eating ice cream; why would we stop making love? — Ashton Applewhite

Health is normal. The human body is a self-repairing, self-defending, self-healing marvel. Disease is relatively difficult to induce, considering the body's powerful immune system. However, this complicated and delicate machinery can be damaged if fed the wrong fuel during the formative years ... Healthy living with nutritional excellence throughout life can slow the decline of aging. It can prevent the years and years of suffering in ill health that is so common today as people get older and become dependent on medical treatments, drugs, and surgery. Nutritional excellence is the only real fountain of youth. — Joel Fuhrman

George Macdonald said, 'If you knew what God knows about death you would clap your listless hands', but instead I find old people in North America just buying this whole youth obsession. I think growing older is a wonderful privilege. I want to learn to glorify God in every stage of my life. — Elisabeth Elliot

I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young. — Pablo Casals

(The subjects of What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life) have convinced me that past failing can as easily prove preparatory as predictive. Age does not of itself limit on enable us. The choice is ours. — Bruce Frankel

Our body does get old, but our spirit, never. If we write well enough, we might even live forever. — A.A. Patawaran