Words to Live By: Age & Aging

Presented without comment, here is a collection of quotes on the topic of age and aging.

Forty, it is true, sounded as if it were a quiet age, 

but it as nothing of the sort, he had discovered.

from Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim

But twenty-two-year-old women, fledgling intellectuals,

 need someone to look up to, 

someone they can recognize as kin and seek to emulate. 

The problem is when you hit twenty-eight 

and your role model’s mediocrity begins to show…

from Dead Ladies Project by Jessa Crispin

It was true that Anthea’s behaviour was changing. 

So was her appearance. 

The heaviness of her figure suited her. 

It gave her a dignity she had hitherto lacked. 

She could no longer sit on the floor 

or make any of her misguided attempts at running or being girlish. 

She moved about Saunby with a gait like Juno’s, 

and the household was impressed 

and modified its behaviour accordingly.

from The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

Coming soon to my human birthday, twenty-seven years. 

I refuse to make a balance sheet. 

I’ve done great things this year, 

artistically speaking, that’s all. 

I’ve also made mistakes. 

Have learned to do without friends. 

I believe in will power. 

I believe in myself. 

Amen.

Anaïs Nin

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: 

well-educated, brilliantly promising, 

and fading out into an indifferent middle-age. 

Sylvia Plath

But Claire, once considered amusing, once courted, 

once granted her temporary meed of literary celebrity, 

took old age harder than anyone he had ever encountered. 

Of greater sensibility than the ordinary, so she was more greatly injured. 

The inquiring mind thus paused by her 

as the theatre spotlight singles out the chief performer.

from There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult

She was seventeen and radiant, as radiant as the future promised to be

from The Far Cry by Emma Smith

Isabella, who was three years older, 

a demure child in a high-waisted frock, with a mild expression. 

She used, instinctively, a tone she had caught from their mother. 

You could see her grown-up, with children, all in that instant. 

Some destinies are easy to trace, 

Isabella, at six, was already everything she would become.

from Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet

This sort of woman hits sixty and she begins to say what she thinks; 

tact evaporates; she’s often the life of the party.

from Something for Everyone: Stories by Lisa Moore

I smiled at Bessie's frank answer: I felt that it was correct, 
but I confess I was not quite indifferent to its import: 
at eighteen, most people wish to please, 
and the conviction that they have not an exterior 
likely to second that desire 
brings anything but gratification.
from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

It seemed to Alex that when she joined the mysterious ranks 

of grown-up people everything would be different. 

She never doubted that with long dresses and piled-up hair, 

her whole personality would change, 

and the meaningless chaos of life reduce itself 

to some comprehensible solution.

from Consequences by E.M. Delafield

“Will we know what to do when we are thirty? When we are forty-two?” the girl asked. 

The boy shrugged. “Will there be a day when you decide to get the newspaper delivered and then another when your cholesterol numbers become part of our regular lives?” 

He shrugged again. “I don’t know anything about wrinkle cream or about being a mother.” 

“I don’t want to know until I have to,” he said. He took her smooth hand. 

“This year we will try some new vegetables. We’ll listen to some new music. That’s all.” 

The girl closed her eyes, where the darkness was filled with unanswerable questions. 

“But you love me, right?” she asked. 

“That is exactly what I do,” he said.

from A Guide to Being Born: Stories by Ramona Ausubel

He was a peculiar old age in which the outward strength of his body

seemed to signal an inner weakness.

It was as though some hidden thing lay waiting to break out,

as though he would wake suddenly one morning white-haired, blind, deaf and stumbling,

in an explosion of old age.

from Washington Black by Esi Edugyan