Jane Smiley Quotes

It's paradoxical, that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.

I have to tell you I never in my life anticipated getting this old, this fast. It seems as if I were 25 just a few days ago.

The minute you're born, you're getting older.

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.

When a woman's face is wrinkled And her hairs are sprinkled, With gray, Lackaday! Aside she's cast, No one respect will pay; Remember, Lasses, remember. And while the sun shines make hay: You must not expect in December, The flowers you gathered in May.

The romance of life begins and ends with two blank pages. Age and extreme old age.

Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.

Busy work brings after ease; Ease brings sport and sport brings rest; For young and old, of all degrees, The mingled lot is best.

What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.

You know you're getting old when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.

The first quarter-century of your life was doubtless lived under the cloud of being too young for things, while the last quarter-century would normally be shadowed by the still darker cloud of being too old for them; and between those two clouds, what small and narrow sunlight illumines a human lifetime!

By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard. It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.

Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old.

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!

I'm getting old, that's the thing! What's in me now won't be there anymore.

The best advice about getting older? Just be thankful you're not dead!

To make good use of life, one should have in youth the experience of advanced years, and in old age the vigor of youth.

Before old age I took care to live well; in old age I take care to die well; but to die well is to die willingly.

When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death.

O Time and change! - with hair as gray as was my sire's that winter day, how strange it seems, with so much gone of life and love, to still live on!

Sleep is death without the responsibility.

And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity.

I can sleep a whole day. If no one woke me up, I would sleep for 24 hours. I think it's a combination of my age and my appreciation for sleep. Sleep is so wonderful. Sometimes you can oversleep and feel like you've waster your time, but I think it's one of the bestways to spend your time.