In youth one has tears without grief; in age, griefs without tears
Having hope is hard; harder when you get older.
I don't mind growing old. I'm just not used to it.
At fifty you realize that you are no longer a kid. I ignored forty. It was like I was almost at middle age. Maybe it's the baby boomer thing. But undeniably, I am a man. I have to accept [mortality].
Can't pretend that growin' older never hurts.
I just think its the changes that age brings. You slow down a little bit ... the writers are smart enough to write all those changes that life gives you.
I think that the worst unpleasantness of age is not its final fact ... but the tediousness of preparation, the accumulating number of defeats.
Growing old is partly an inescapable process of accommodation and adjustment.
As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable.
old age is more bearable if it can be helped by an early acceptance of being loved and of loving.
I guess I'm depressed. I don't know. I can't explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part of it is being not as physically strong as I once was. And part of it is my misunderstanding, I think, of what's going on in the world.
Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the least resources, especially with which to meet frustration.
Hopefully, one enhances [when growing older] his sense of humor. As he approaches 50, he'll need all the humor he can get.
Getting older is not nice for anyone, not for men, not for women, and even more difficult for people who depend on their physical appearance. But it's not a drama. I know some people who are much more stressed than I am. And also, I live in Europe; I think it would be much more difficult if I lived in America.
Actually, I think that turning 29 was more difficult, because once I turned 29, I anticipated 30 for the whole year, so by the time 30 came around it really wasn't that bad.
I'm doing the best I can with the ravages of time on my body and I'm a work in progress. I can't write a memoir because I can't do it this week or next week... I try to be an inspiration to the young to respect their older people; we can't stay the same, but we do the best we can with what's left. You can't whine about stuff, you have to learn to eat humble pie along the way and keep going, because the alternative is going to happen.
An old woman I loved very much when I was young - the wife of Jean Villard - she's just reciting poetry all the time, which is beautiful because it means she went back to the world of poetry that she loved when she was young. That's all she does - she almost doesn't recognize her children, but she recites Valéry and Baudelaire. So what? We're the ones who are suffering. She's not.
I warn people, your 40s will require massive amounts of humor and humility.
Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I shall remain so. I have but one prayer at heart; and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last.
I dread no more the first white in my hair, Or even age itself, the easy shoe, The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair: Time, doing this to me, may alter too My anguish, into something I can bear
I can't tell you that I like getting older, but I think I can cope with it because everybody gets older. Sometimes it's a little upsetting because time goes by and you want to do more and you have to accept life for what it is and find some new motivation that gives you drive and enthusiasm.
As we grow older, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves.
My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.
