Alexander Smith Quotes

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning, we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night, we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more.

People are so damned afraid that one day they might wake up and discover that they've grown old.

In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting for a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train.

By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

The passage of time is a continuing thing. At 18, you're going to live forever, and you are definitely not at 52, so that is a recurring topic. I still think it's the main stuff.

Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.

My mind never left 20, because once it does, that's when you start to die.

I find old women at weddings and funerals attractive; I have this weird mortality thing.

Awakening in the morning returns us to life, and to awareness of death.

Each day is a lifetime. In the morning we are born. The day lies before us: vast and bright and new.

Through a grandmother's voice and hands the end of life is known at the beginning.

Didn't we, like our grandchildren, begin with a childhood we thought would never end? Now, all of a sudden, I'm older than my parents were when I thought they were old.

As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.

Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

I'd rather be over the hill than under it.

So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.

Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.

The shadows of the mind are like those of the body. In the morning of life they all lie behind us; at noon we trample them under foot; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and deepening before us.

The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it's really a wheel.

I've been aware of the time passing by they say in the end it's the wink of an eye and when the morning light comes streaming in you'll get up and do it again

Each and all, we are riding into the dark. Even living, we cannot remember half the events of our own days.

Years ago, I thought old age would be dreadful, because I should not be able to do things I would want to do. Now I find there is nothing I want to do after all

When you're young, you get blamed for crimes that you didn't commit. When you are old, you get credit for virtues that you never had. I guess it all evens out in the end.