Malachy McCourt Quotes

all the small squalors of the body, known only to oneself, insignificant in youth, easily dismissed, in old age became dominant and entered into fulfilment of the tyranny they had always threatened.

It's too bad that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever.

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

Talking about the body getting old, there's a sadness to it in a way.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you'd never complete your life, would you? You'd never wholly know you.

Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.

We always think that we're going to be young forever, and now when I wake up, I need to stretch, and I need to have my glass of water and be cognizant of what I'm doing with my body.

I've got an old body.

When the body breaks down and you start to wrinkle, I think it's so bad.

Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city.

As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.

We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.

To age truly was to suffer the ultimate treason, that of one's body against oneself.

Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are - hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.

There is nothing like it for morale to be reminded that the years are passing - ever more quickly - and that bits are dropping off the ancient frame. But it is nice to be remembered at all.

Beyond age, leaf withered, man goes three footed no stronger than a child is, a dream that falters in daylight.

I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.

Like a lot of fellows around here, I have a furniture problem. My chest has fallen into my drawers.

God made the human body like a machine with built-in obsolescence.

I feel young, but my body doesn't agree.

I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.

Getting old is not for sissies.

The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.

What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?

Don't take your health for granted. Don't take your body for granted. Do something today that communicates to your body that you desire to care for it. Tomorrow is not promised.