Sermon quotes on aging
Jacqueline Bisse
Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.
Source Unknown
Joshua Brooks
When you are in your twenties, you live to please other people. When you are in your thirties, you are tired of trying to please others, so you get miffed with them for making you worry about it. When you’re in your forties, you realize nobody was thinking about you in the first place.
Playing for an Audience of One: Learning to Live for the Approval of Jesus (Enumclaw, WA: Pleasant Word, 2008, p.27).
Jane Bryant
The three immutable facts: You own stuff. You will die. Someone will get that stuff.
Making the Most of Your Money Now
Pearl S. Buck
Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.
My Several Worlds, 1954.
Jimmy Carter
There are two periods in our lives when we have exceptional freedom: at college age and when we begin our retirement years. At those times, we have relatively few restrictions and obligations.
The Virtues of Aging (New York: Ballantine, 1998), 48.
G.K. Chesterton
Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.
Charles Dickens: A Critical Study
Agatha Christie (Attributed)
I married an archeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.
Charles Dickens
Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well.
Barnaby Rudge, 1841
Francis de Sales
Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will you shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Source Unknown
Henri Estienne II
If youth but knew; if age but could.
Les Prémices, 1594.
Washington Irving
When a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking younger, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
Bracebridge Hall, 1822.
Thomas Jefferson
Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
Letter to John Adams, August 1, 1816.
Woodrow Kroll
Treat the elderly as a nonrenewable resource; they care!
Devotional: Back to the Bible
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
Death: The Final Stage of Growth
Lawrence J. Peter & Raymond Hull
Old age is when you know all the answers, but nobody asks you any questions.
The Peter Principle
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
For age is opportunity no less than youth itself, tho’, in another dress. And as the evening twilight fades away, the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth
George Macdonald
Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
The Marquis of Lossie
Dwight L. Moody
Preparation for old age should begin not later than one’s teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.
Source Unknown
W. Somerset Maugham
Old age has its pleasures, which though different, are no less than the pleasures of youth.
The Summing Up
Ray Palmer
A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it should give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.
Quoted in The Aging Brain by Timothy R. Jennings. ©2018 by Timothy R. Jennings. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Leonard Ravenhill
Maturity comes from obedience, not necessarily from age.
Source Unknown
Kenny Rogers
Growing older is not upsetting; being perceived as old is.
Source Unknown
Eleanor Roosevelt
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
Source Unknown
J.O. Sanders
Old age is just as important and meaningful a part of God’s perfect will as is youth. God is every bit as interested in the old as the young.
Quoted in George Sweeting, The Joys of Successful Aging: Living Your Days to the Fullest
Carl Sandburg
Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.
Speech, On His Eighty-Fifth Birthday Party, January 6, 1963
Albert Schweitzer
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
Source Unknown
Source Unknown
I’ve reached an age where my train of thought often leaves the station without me.
Source Unknown
I’ve reached the age where happy hour is a nap.
Source Unknown
We’ll be friends until we’re old and senile. Then we’ll be new friends.
Source Unknown
Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?
D. Sutton
It is the privilege of adults to give advice. It is the privilege of youth not to listen. Both avail themselves of their privileges, and the world rocks along.
The Privilege of Youth
William Makepeace Thackeray
“To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.”
The History of Henry Esmond Esq.
Mark Twain
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Source Unknown
Source Unknown
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
Isaac Watts
Fancy and humor, early and constantly indulged in, may expect an old age overrun with follies.
The Improvement of the Mind; with a Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth, 1826.
Norman Wisdom
As you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.
Source Unknown
William Wordsworth
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
“The Fountain, a Conversation,” in Lyrical Ballads, 1800.
Carl Jung
One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.
The Structure And Dynamics Of The Psyche
James Hollis
The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were young.
Finding Meaning In The Second Half Of Life
T.S. Eliot
Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For another union, a deeper communion.
“East Coker”
Bernard Mannes Baruch
To me, old age is fifteen years older than I am.
Source Unknown
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