Paul Claudel Quotes

Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure.

I do not myself find it agreeable to be 90, and I cannot imagine why it should seem so to other people. It is not that you have any fears about your own death, it is that your upholstery is already dead around you.

The great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world.

I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That's the best way, ain't it?

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

I'm older than I'd like and I'm creaky, but I'm doing alright.

All diseases run into one, old age.

By the time I met Julia Child, her husband, Paul, was little more than a ghost of a man, so diminished by old age and its attendant diseases that it was impossible to discern the remarkable artist, photographer and poet he once had been.

After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me.

One time, I was young. I was skinny. I was elegant. Getting old is terrible.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

I really forget that I have no arms or legs sometimes.

I don't dance like I used to, but I'm moving and I'll be doing my form of dance at Town Hall... I hit my limitations but I learn to work with what I've got.

I don't expect anything from anybody. When you grow old... Your days are gone; it is part of life.

Old age is a shipwreck.

Don't get old, if you can avoid it.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

My God. If I had known I was going to live this long, I would’ve taken better care of myself.... Since the alternative [to living with Alzheimer's Disease] is being dead, I am quite happy where I am.

The word that scares the hell out of me is 'frail.' I don't want to be frail.

They say the first thing to go is your legs, then it's your reflexes, then it's your friends.