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Quotes about Aging

    “If aging were so valuable, why do people always say, ‘Oh, if I were young again.’ You never hear people say, ‘I wish I were sixty-five.’ [Morrie] smiled. ‘You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning. Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five.”

    Mitch Albom, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 118)

      “As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”

      Morrie Schwartz, via Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 118)

        “He had refused fancy clothes or makeup for this interview. His philosophy was that death should not be embarrassing; he was not about to powder its nose.”

        Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 21)

          “He was intent on proving that the word ‘dying’ was not synonymous with ‘useless.'”

          Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie (Page 12)

          Tuesdays With Morrie [Book]

            Book Overview: Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.

            For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.

            Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?

            Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live.

            Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

            28 Timeless Morrie Schwartz Quotes from Tuesdays With Morrie

              “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

              Franz Kafka, The Daily Laws (Page 92)

                “People always wonder if they’re too old to do XYZ. It has been said that every 7 years, each cell in your body has been entirely replaced. Biology is my worst subject, so that could be wrong. But 7 is a magic number. It takes approximately 7 years to get 10,000 hours in to something. In any period of 7 years, I guarantee anyone you know will look back and say “Boy did I change.” It is never too late to 100% reinvent yourself. 21 to 28 still leaves most of your life. 42 to 49 still leaves nearly half of your life. Between 21 and 49 you will have lived 4 lives. That’s mastery in 4 different fields in the prime of your life. That’s important.”

                Jordan Allen, Quora

                  “The core of life is about losses and deaths both subtle and catastrophic, over and over again, and also about loving and rising again. The cancer, the car accident—these are extreme experiences of other trajectories we’re on—aging, the loss of love, the death of dreams, the child leaving home. Grief and gladness, sickness and health, are not separate passages. They’re entwined and grow from and through each other, planting us, if we’ll let them, more profoundly in our bodies in all their flaws and their grace.”

                  Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise (Page 68)

                    “It takes a long time to become young.”

                    Pablo Picasso, via Sunbeams (Page 105)

                      “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”

                      Oscar Wilde, via Sunbeams (Page 99)

                        “Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon it in the next. The shortest is old age because we shall never be able to think back on it.”

                        Cesare Pavese, via Sunbeams (Page 99)

                          “For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of harvest.”

                          Hasidic saying

                          Sumuel Ullman Quote on Living Young Regardless of Age and How Age Really is Just a Number

                            “Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

                            Samuel Ullman, Youth

                            Beyond the Quote (307/365)

                            Forget about your age already. Who cares what your number is? Why live your life according to the number of times you’ve traveled around the sun? Once you’ve reached adulthood, that number of sun revolutions is arbitrary. 25 Times? 40 Times? 60 Times? What of it?

                            Read More »Sumuel Ullman Quote on Living Young Regardless of Age and How Age Really is Just a Number

                              “Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living.”

                              Samuel Ullman, Youth

                                “6/17/10 My dearest Ruth—You are the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids, and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!! I will be in JH Medical Center until Friday, June 25, I believe, and between then and now I shall think hard on my remaining health and life, and whether on balance the time has come for me to tough it out or to take leave of life because the loss of quality now simply overwhelms. I hope you will support where I come out, but I understand you may not. I will not love you a jot less.” — Handwritten letter from Marty [her husband] to Ruth”

                                Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

                                John C. Maxwell Quote on Birthdays and What Each Passing Year Can Mark In A Person’s Life

                                  “Now more than ever I am aware that a person’s significant birthdays can either mark the passage of time, or they can mark changes they’ve made in their lives to reach their potential and become the person they were created to be.”

                                  John C. Maxwell, Leadership Gold

                                  Beyond the Quote (233/365)

                                  As I sit and reflect on completing my first full year of my thirties, the saying that keeps coming to the forefront of my mind that I would say has guided me more than any other saying in this past year has been: Control what you can control, let go of what you can’t, and take what time is needed to understand where all things in your life fall. Without this expression in my mind, 30 would have turned out completely different for me.

                                  Read More »John C. Maxwell Quote on Birthdays and What Each Passing Year Can Mark In A Person’s Life

                                    “I recently read about a famous actress who died in her eighties. As her beauty started to fade and became ravaged by old age, she grew desperately unhappy and became a recluse. She, too, had identified with a condition: her external appearance. First, the condition gave her a happy sense of self, then an unhappy one. If she had been able to connect with the formless and timeless life within, she could have watched and allowed the fading of her external form from a place of serenity and peace. Moreover, her external form would have become increasingly transparent to the light shining through from her ageless true nature, so her beauty would not really have faded but simply become transformed into spiritual beauty.”

                                    Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 186)