Quotes & Sayings About Life After 50

Walter Issacson biographer of Steve Jobs:
I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, " Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50/50, maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it's because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated, somehow it lives on."
Then he paused for a second and said, "Yea, but sometimes, I think it's just like an On-Off switch. Click. And you're gone." And then he paused again and said, " And that's why I don't like putting On-Off switches on Apple devices."
Joy to the WORLD! There IS an after-life! — Walter Isaacson

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital- T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out. — David Foster Wallace

I think that my life changed at 50. Many things happened. Menopause, the end of youth and my daughter died that year after being a whole year in a coma. So I think that I changed and I became an elder at 50. — Isabel Allende

* She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight
And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light
And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover
Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
First thing I remember when you came into my life
I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do
Well I guess I've been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor
But I've never loved no-one the way that I love you. — Paul Simon

Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenseless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life. — Philip Roth

Fifteen years ago, God unequivocally and undeniably gave me Isaiah 22:22 as a life-verse. "Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, when he opens no one will shut, when he shuts no one will open." After 40 plus confirmations over a two-week period - yes, more than 40 - I became thoroughly convinced this verse was both a promise and a weapon for me. I have since used the verse hundreds of times throughout America - in all 50 states and in Washington DC - to open and close spiritual doors for the Lord. — Dutch Sheets

After 50 years together as a couple:
"Look how fast the leaves are falling now," Alan says. "The trees will be bare in a couple of days. Do you realize that we have watched the leaves fall together for more than fifty autumns?"
I stand quietly, looking at Alan, letting his words sink in. I am suddenly so moved. — Norman Sunshine

I am convinced after more than 50 years in the field of motivation that anyone who wants to learn to look at life and/or their circumstances in a positive light can do so. — Zig Ziglar

And as it quickly became clear, there were not very many survivors to find. Only fourteen people were pulled out of the rubble alive, all within the first twenty-four hours of the collapse. About 50,000 people had been working in the buildings that day. Two thousand and sixteen died. Also among the dead: 343 firefighters and 60 police officers who were in or near the buildings when they collapsed. In the months after the attacks, it was hard to imagine that life would ever go back to normal. It never will for many people, like my friend who lost her brother; like the hundreds of firefighters who have serious health problems caused by the toxic smoke and dust they breathed at Ground Zero; like the thousands who managed to escape that day, but who saw the horrors up close. Today, while the horrors of that day still linger, the city itself is more vibrant than ever. People have done their best to move forward. — Lauren Tarshis

After a day on Mykines, I changed my mind about life not going on. A sort of life was going on, beating with a reasonalbe version of a pulse, but that life consisted for the most part of travelers like myself. There were maybe a dozen of us
one third of the island's population. Our tribe could only increase as the Mykines tribe dwindled away, a few falling down steps, most simply emigrating, until there would be, sad to say, only our peripatetic selves. We were the future of all places condemned by remoteness to a lingering, photogenic death. — Lawrence Millman

To be an architect has been a life-long dream. Little did I know when asked at the age of 14 'what do you want to do when you grow up?' I said I wanted to be an architect. After 50 years I am still learning all what that means. Working together with so many people has been enormously gratifying. Being an architect means being a member of a fantastic team. — Richard Meier

Shortly after I turned 50, both Ted Turner and the AARP came into my life. The only difference? With AARP, there were benefits. — Jane Fonda

Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence - and just as adventurous. — Gloria Steinem

After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is. — Yo-Yo Ma

A similar lack of concern about Jesus's earthly origins can be found in the first gospel, Mark, written just after 70 C.E. Mark's focus is kept squarely on Jesus's ministry; he is uninterested either in Jesus's birth or, perhaps surprisingly, in Jesus's resurrection, as he writes nothing at all about either event. The early Christian community appears not to have been particularly concerned about any aspect of Jesus's life before the launch of his ministry. Stories about his birth and childhood are conspicuously absent from the earliest written documents. The Q material, which was compiled around 50 C.E., makes no mention of anything that happened before Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. The letters of Paul, which make up the bulk of the New Testament, are wholly detached from any event in Jesus's life save his crucifixion and resurrection (though Paul does mention the Last Supper). — Reza Aslan

I want to say to you that there is life and dreams and surprises after 30-and 40, and 50, and 60, and 77! Believe me, life is one long surprise. — Gloria Steinem

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you'll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they're 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn't meet their life expectancy.
I'm here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy. — Adrian Tan

A person's life is over in 50, 100 years. But a company lives on through the people it is composed of, and SoftBank group has to survive even after I'm gone. — Masayoshi Son

It is a very important film, Life And Nothing More, in that what was filmed was inspired by a journey I had made just three days after an earthquake. And I speak not only of the film itself but also of the experience of being in that place, where only three days before 50,000 people had died. — Abbas Kiarostami

About their wedding on a beach of Nantucket, after nearly 50 years together as a couple: "After years of being who we truly were only in the privacy of our homes or with a few friends, we were out in the world, under the sky, no longer pretending." - Norman Sunshine, co-author, Double Life — Norman Sunshine