Henri Nouwen Quotes

It is, I assume, quite easy to wither into old age, and hard to grow into it.

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.

The most important thing is growing old gracefully.

I suppose playing an older man is a way of preparing myself for getting older.

It was formerly a terrifying view to me that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that Nature has provided pleasures for every state.

You have to embrace getting older.

Aging is not 'lost youth,' but a new stage of opportunity and strength. It's a different stage of life, and if you are going to pretend it's youth, you are going to miss it. You are going to miss the surprises, the possibilities, and the evolution that we are just beginning to know about because there are no role models, no guideposts, and no signs.

I think my face and voice suit me better as I get older.

I'm not an aging gracefully type. But I do believe in aging with grace.

Everybody complains about getting older, but I find it such a rich time of life. There are negative things about it, I suppose, but more than that, I'm finding it to be a very positive experience in which growth suggests itself in a much more alluring way than it did when I was young - isn't that funny?

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

Such to me is the new image of aging; growth in self, and service for all mankind.

I'm looking very much forward to growing older. I want to be an exhausted older woman but with a very full life behind me and one still going.

The age of 40 is not a death sentence.

On Being Old. It's not nice but take comfort that you won't stay that way for ever.

For aging is an art. The years between its first intimations and the time of the ultimate letting go of all earthly things can-if the readiness and resolve are there-be the real harvest of our lives.

If I am to tell you how to grow old gracefully, I must tell you at the beginning of life; for no man can grow old gracefully unless he begins early.

One starts to get young at the age of sixty and then it is too late.

I didn't fear old age. I was just becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the only people who said old age was beautiful were usually twenty-three years old.

Getting older is an adventure, not a problem.

Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it.

For my own part, I had rather be old only a short time than be old before I really am so.

If we spent as much time feeling positive about getting older, as we do trying to stay young, how much different our lives would be.

It would help not to treat age as if it were any less of a pleasure than it was when we were six and saying, 'I'm six and a half.' You know, we could be saying, 'I'm fifty and a half' and say it with joy. Each age is different and has different discoveries and pleasures.

Aging is out of your control. How you handle it, though, is in your hands.