Practice Wisdom
"Youth is the time to study wisdom; old age is the time to practice it."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Teach Us to Number Our Days by Steven McFadden

The Crown of Life
"Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act."
— Cicero

Be Passionate
"Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting, and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction."
— Florida Scott-Maxwell in The Measure of My Days

Affirm Aging
"We deny that aging is a toilsome treadmill grinding to a tragic halt as the years pile up. We affirm aging as a life-spanning process of growth and development from birth to death."
— Maggie Kuhn

Savor All You've Been
"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you have been."
— Madeleine L'Engle in On Women Turning 70 by Cathleen Rountree

To Grow Old
"To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion."
— Albert Camus in Letters to a Young Doubter by William Sloane Coffin

Seize the Frontier
"Aging is a moral and spiritual frontier because its unknowns, terrors, and mysteries cannot be successfully crossed without humility and self-knowledge, without love and compassion, without acceptance of physical decline and mortality and a sense of the sacred."
— Thomas R. Cole in The Journey of Life

Freedom, Precious Freedom
"Aging is a stage in life that's especially ripe for us to get free."
— Ram Dass in One-Liners

Carry Your Age High
"We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high."
— Florida Scott-Maxwell in The Measure of My Days

The Proper Occupations of Old Age
"Here are the proper occupations of old age: prayer, which is the quickening of the mind, the rooting of attention in the ground of being; song, which is the expression of spontaneous joy in the harmony of the chaos; the telling of old tales, which among all primitives was the supreme function of the old, who passed on the wisdom."
— Helen M. Luke in Teach Us to Number Our Days by Steve McFadden

Keep Your Horizons Open
"The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge."
— Howard Thurman in Learning to Fly by Sam Keen

Climb for the Higher View
"Old age is like climbing a mountain. You climb from ledge to ledge. The higher you get, the more tired and restless you become, but your view becomes more extensive."
— Ingmar Bergman

Keep Looking
"As we grow older, mirrors become windows."
— Ansel Adams

Equanimity
"I am moving
Toward a new freedom,
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace —
Learning to let go."
— May Sarton in WomanPrayers by Mary Ford-Grabowsky

Weave Together Experiences
"Old age is a time for remembering and weaving together many disparate elements and for integrating these incongruities into a comprehensible whole."
— Erik Erikson in Vital Involvement in Old Age with Joan M. Erikson and Helen Q. Kivnick

The Far Country
"Life is a country that the old have seen, and lived in. Those who have to travel through it can only learn the way from them."
— Joseph Joubert in Joubert: A Selection from His Thoughts, 1899

Speaking the Truth
"I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older."
— Michel De Montaigne in Essays, 1575

Two Important Questions
"Spend enough time in the old folks' home and you'll discover that the residents keep asking two questions: 'Where am I?' and 'What am I supposed to do now?' The correct answers, which can make our last years a time of serenity rather than confusion, are 'Right here' and 'Just be.' "
— Dean Sluyter in The Zen Commandments

More Like Ourselves
"We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves."
— May Lamberton Becker

The Art of Living
"To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living."
— Henri Frederic Amiel in The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister

Aging Well
"Our moral obligation is to stay as well as we can, to remain active, to avoid abusing our bodies, to do the things that interest us and to enrich the lives of those around us. Our spiritual obligation is to age well; so that others who meet us may have the courage, the spiritual depth, to do the same. Abandoning life before life is over is not just resignation; it is not trying to reach for God on God's terms."
— Joan Chittister in The Gift of Years