Quotes & Sayings About The Aging Process

She'd noticed before how middle-aged women were obsessed with the topic of age, always laughing about it, moaning about it, going on and on about it, as if the process of aging were a tricky puzzle they were trying to solve. Why were they so mystified by it? Jane's mother's friends seemed to literally have no other topic of conversation, or they didn't when they spoke to Jane. "Oh, you're so young and beautiful, Jane." (When she clearly wasn't; it was like they thought one followed the other: If you were young, you were automatically beautiful!) "Oh, you're so young, Jane, you'll be able to fix my phone/computer/camera." (When in fact a lot of her mother's friends were more technologically savvy than Jane.) "Oh, you're so young, Jane, you have so much energy." (When she was so tired, so very, very tired.) "And — Liane Moriarty

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

Introduction I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them. Although I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term, that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy. Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying. How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives, and how it affects those around them seemed beside the point. The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise. The one time I remember discussing mortality was during an hour we spent on The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy's classic novella. — Atul Gawande

Am I aging? The pros and the cons? Well, you know a lot more, at least until the time you start forgetting it all. Actually, aging can be a fun process, to some degree. — Clint Eastwood

People in California seem to age at a different rate than the rest of the country. Maybe it's the passion for diet and exercise, maybe the popularity of cosmetic surgery. Or maybe we're afflicted with such a horror of aging that we've halted the process psychically. — Sue Grafton

Those of us who receive the blessing of a long life will also need to understand and manage grief and loss many times throughout our lives. Grief will come again, and again. Loss is a requisite part of the aging process and the human experience. — Brent Green

There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That's the end. That's when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day. — Bruce Lee

Aging people should know that their lives are not mounting and unfolding but that an inexorable inner process forces the contraction of life. For a young person it is almost a sin and certainly a danger to be too much occupied with himself; but for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself. — Carl Jung

No one can control the aging process or the trajectory of illness. — Gail Sheehy

We are slowly isolating the genes involved with the aging process. We do not have the fountain of youth, but I think, in the coming decades, we will unravel the aging process at the genetic level. — Michio Kaku

The restful alertness response reverses the aging process. — Deepak Chopra

It saddens me when I see older people using canes and walkers, especially since I know, in many cases, it could have been prevented. With the exception of accidents and injuries, the crippling effects of aging we see are the result of poor health choices, a sedentary lifestyle, lack of exercise and most of all, the acceptance that this is a "normal" part of the aging process. It is not. This will become quite clear as you read in Chapter 8 what the various health authorities have to say. — Jim Donovan

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

I think I am aging, but I'm enjoying the process. — Sharon Stone

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

The name of the game is to keep from pushing the accelerator pedal so hard that we speed up the aging process. The average American, however, by living a fast and furious lifestyle, pushes that accelerator too hard and too much. — Dan Buettner

We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever. Existing knowledge can be aggressively applied to dramatically slow down aging processes so we can still be in vital health when the more radical life extending therapies from biotechnology and nanotechnology become available. But most baby boomers won't make it because they are unaware of the accelerating aging process in their bodies and the opportunity to intervene. — Ray Kurzweil

You can't accumulate anything, because anything you get you have to give away. We all know this. We watch our bodies go through the aging process. We know we came in here with nothing, and we know we're going to leave with nothing. There's nothing to own. There's nothing to get. The only thing you can do with your life is give it away. The best, happiest moments in your life are always when you're giving something away. — Wayne Dyer

Once you avoid the things that accelerate aging like smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, and excessive sun exposure, you've done about as much as you can to influence your aging process. — S. Jay Olshansky

Aging does not need to be hidden or denied, but can be understood, affirmed and experienced as a process of growth by which the mystery of life is slowly revealed to us. — Henri Nouwen

I had a dream about you. You had no skin or muscle on your face, and to try to conceal your bare skull you liberally applied lipstick and makeup. Your birthday was coming up, and I knew you were probably sensitive about parties that emphasize the aging process, so I decided to box up your gift in a coffin and wrap it with black wrapping paper. I got you the best gift ever too - a hooker, who happened to be dead, because that enabled me to procure a sizeable discount. — Dora J. Arod

Aging is not an option, not for anyone. It is how gracefully we handle the process and how lucky we are, as the process handles us. — Cindy McDonald

The aging process is fascinating because it doesn't disturb me, because this is what it is supposed to be like. But I'll tell you what does - it's the lack of strength - you can't hold up suitcases and do it yourself. Loss of physical strength. — Anita Roddick

When people look back at their childhood or youth, their wistfulness comes from the memory, not of what their lives had been in those years, but of what life had then promised to be. The expectation of some indefinable splendor, of the unusual, the exciting, the great is an attribute of youth and the process of aging is the process of that expectations' gradual extinction. One does not have to let it happen. But that fire dies for lack of fuel, under the gray weight of disappointments. — Victor Hugo

Rock and Roll does have its limits as far as the aging process. You want to go out there and play while you're at your peak, right? I think that's encouraging us to keep going out on the road - to maximize the playing at the moment. — Geddy Lee

Though the process of aging continues, inwardly you grow stronger with the passing years. Those who live close to Me develop an inner aliveness that makes them seem youthful in spite of their years. Let My Life shine through you, as you walk in the Light with Me. — Sarah Young

Gerontologists studying the aging process find increasing evidence that most of us will age with a fair degree of success. There's far less institutionalization and disability than one might have guessed. While the size of social networks shrink with age, the quality of the relationships improves. There are types of cognitive skills that improve in old age (these are related to social intelligence and to making good strategic use of facts, rather than merely remembering them easily). The average elderly individual thinks his or her health is above average, and takes pleasure from that. And most important, the average level of happiness increases in old age; fewer negative emotions occur and, when they do, they don't persist as long. Connected to this, brain-imaging studies show that negative images have less of an impact, and positive images have more of an impact on brain metabolism in older people, as compared to young. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I think we all want to successfully push back the aging process, to deny the aging process. Who among us says, 'Yippee, I'm getting older'? — Jens Voigt

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

Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.
Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous. — John Mortimer

If the aging process is controlled in a similar way in worms and humans, then we can use what we learn about worms to speed our study of higher organisms. — Cynthia Kenyon

Plastic surgery is one of the ways that people deal with the aging process. And I don't mean by using it as a form of denial, but as a kind of negotiation with it. — Nora Ephron

You can't stop the aging process. There's only so much oil you can put on your body. I've always just tried to go with my age. If the part requires somebody a little younger or older, I can probably get away with that. — Angie Dickinson

Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion known to man, something deeply inscribed in our nervous system and subconscious. Over time, however, something strange began to happen. The actual terrors that we faced began to lessen in intensity as we gained increasing control over our environment. But instead of our fears lessening a well, they began to multiply in number. We started to worry about our status in society- whether people liked us, or how we fit into the group. We became anxious for our livelihoods, the future of our families and children, our personal health, and the aging process. Instead of a simple, intense fear of something powerful and real, we developed a kind of generalized anxiety. — Robert Greene

Retarding the aging process would be therapy and enhancement because it would mean defeating diseases and because it would extend our life span. — Gregory Stock

Perhaps genes did regulate the aging process. Perhaps different organisms had different life spans because a universal regulatory 'clock' was set to run at different speeds in different species. — Cynthia Kenyon

When I began my search for the perfect skin care to fight the aging process, I noticed that my sensitive skin was reacting horribly to any product I used. — Connie Sellecca

You can open up a centenarian's brain, and you'll see some areas that look like that of a 50-year-old or of a 110-year-old. You can have variation in the basic process of aging, called senescence, in different parts of the same body. — S. Jay Olshansky

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. — Doug Larson

The business is built on slowing or even stopping the aging process. — William Devane

Biological age is the key component of the aging process. — Deepak Chopra

I find no reason to think that aging is genetically determined. Genes do not provide information for the development of the individual beyond growth and the reproductive process in which the genes are transmitted to the next generation. Once past the reproductive stage, the individual has served the purposes of preservation of the species, and then he is on his own. The wrinkled human face is the victim of gravity and of cumulative errors in the reproduction of cells. Since aging is not programed, but is a badly improvised interference with youthful beauty, we have improvised an operation to counteract its effects. Aging is a form of misinformation. If we get the facts right, you will be able to read it in our faces. ("Motherhood") — William S. Wilson

There was no sign in the face of any intermediate stages in the aging process, no hint of the man of thirty or forty or fifty who had been left behind. Only adolescence and the age of sixty were represented. It was as though a seventeen-year-old had been withered and bleached by a blast of heat. — Kurt Vonnegut

An inherent kindness exists in the process of aging ... we are allowed to move along gradually. — Robert James Waller

Contentment is the continuing act of accepting the process of your own life. — David Gerrold

Aging is an inevitable process. I surely wouldn't want to grow younger. The older you become, the more you know; your bank account of knowledge is much richer. — William Holden

Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate it - every time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover the signs of aging. — Ashton Applewhite

The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War's roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life's fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying. — Jack Kornfield

The aging process seems to strike first at the mechanism which warns that we have been talking too much and the listener is growing restless. The signal isn't perfect at any age - drink, for instance, throws it right out of kilter - but it is almost non-existent in old people. — Barbara Walters

A process of aging had taken place in him that was so rapid and critical that soon he was being treated as one of those useless great-grandfathers who wander about the bedroom like shades, dragging their feet, remembering better times aloud, and whom no one bother about or remembers really until the morning they find them dead in their bed. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I've often thought that the process of aging could be slowed down if it had to go through Congress. — George H. W. Bush

I came to what I think of as the critical problem: the aging process of a piece of music. I noticed in the '70s that pieces I wrote would sound great the first time I listened to them and then on repeated hearings they sounded older and older until what seemed exciting and vibrant on first listening became stale. — Paul Lansky

If I find out that you wasted the best years of my little girl's life because of your fine-wine-aging process, I'm going to kill you. — Wesley Chu

If you can slow the biological process of aging, even a minor slowdown in the rate at which we age yields improvements in virtually every condition of frailty and disability and mortality that we see at later ages. — S. Jay Olshansky

A is for Alibi, my first book, was published in 1982. As it happened the next couple of books took place in June and August of that year. Without meaning to I painted myself into a corner. The other issue was the aging process. I did not want my main character to age one year for every book so I slowed the whole process down. This way I could get through all 26 letters of the alphabet without making her 109 years old in 2015. I might end the series in either 1990 or on New Years Eve 1989. — Sue Grafton

There's no getting around the fact that alcohol is very damaging to your system. The majority of alcohol consumed is metabolized by the liver. The rest of your body's functions can become greatly impaired while the majority of your energy is focused on helping the liver process the alcohol. This in turn causes free radicals, free fatty acids, and LDL (bad cholesterol) numbers to soar. Insulin resistance, liver inflammation, and accelerated aging are some of the many side effects that occur with consistent abuse. — Jessica Idleman

The aging process is totally minimizing. Life in general is pretty minimizing because you have a lot of big ideas, and you have to battle the mistaken delusions and instability that come with youth. — Natasha Lyonne

Spend time to love yourself and the aging process involved. Your growth vintage is priceless. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

Like all my poems, 'Negotiations' has several sources. It deals with aging lovers and the often silent deals they make. Thinking about bargains made me think of The Little Mermaid and that made me remember something I had just read about the incredibly complex process by which tadpoles (actual little mermaids) are somehow able to reabsorb their tails and fashion their future frog legs. — Rae Armantrout

The aging process is more traumatic for those who think they can control the passage of time. — Paulo Coelho

The body and mind are one. When the intimate relationship between mind and body is disrupted, aging and entropy accelerate. Restoring mind/body integration brings about renewal. Through conscious breathing and movement techniques, you can renew the body/mind and reverse the aging process. — Deepak Chopra

All this is a natural part of the aging process, in which you find yourself with less to do and more opportunities to eat your guts out regretting everything you have done. — Richard Ford

I'm proud that today, at 43 years old, I've come to value the aging process and focus on inner rather than outer beauty. — Carre Otis

It is my opinion that enjoying yourself in the present and loosening your definition of time slows the aging process. — Frederick Dodson