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Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
~ Betty Friedan
As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, go out and do it. As soon as you feel critical, say something kind in a kindly way. As soon as you feel neglected, send a cheerful note to a friend.
~ Oliver Wilson
Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
~ Washington Irving
There’s enough French in my blood for me to agree with the European attitude that the very young can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful: and only a mature man can be strong enough to be truly tender.
~ Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet (NY: HarperCollins, 1972), page 113
…(chronological segregation seems to me one of the worst sins of all), …
~ Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet (NY: HarperCollins, 1972), pages 116-11
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.
~ Douglas MacArthur
About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.
~ Gloria Pitzer
What a man knows at 50 that he did not know at 20 is, for the most part incommunicable. The knowledge he has acquired with age is not the knowledge of formulas, or forms of words, but of people, places, actions—a knowledge gained not by words but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love—the human experiences and emotions of this earth and of oneself and other men; and perhaps, too, a little faith, a little reverence for things one cannot see.
~ Adlai Stevenson
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to man.
~ Leon Trotsky, in Diary In Exile
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Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.
~ George Burns
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids? If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions.
‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m four and a half!’ You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five! That’s the key
You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.
‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m gonna be 16!’ You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re Just a sour-dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!
So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!
You get into your 80’s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; ‘I Was JUST 92.’
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. ‘I’m 100 and a half!’
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
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Ten Million Baby-Boomers With Alzheimer’s
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A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor’s office.
“Is it true,” she wanted to know, “that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” the doctor told her.
There was a moment of silence before the senior lady replied,
“I’m wondering, then, just how serious is my condition because this prescription is marked ‘NO REFILLS’.”
