"You must give birth to your images
They are the future waiting to be born
Fear not the strangeness you feel
The future must enter you
Long before it happens."
—Rilke
"To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
And the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest criticism
and the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty and find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better
Whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,
a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived—this is to have succeeded."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Elderhood is a time to discover inner richness for self development and spiritual growth. It is also a time of transition and preparation for dying, which is at least as important as preparation for a career or family. Out of this time of inner growth come our sages, healers, prophets, and models for the generations to follow."
—Gay Luce
"...we can not live in the afternoon of life according to the programming of life's morning, for what was great in the morning will be little in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie."
—Carl Jung
"Increased longevity unleashes the evolutionary imperative for growth. Envision old age as the culminating stage of spiritual development. With an increased lifespan and the psycho-technologies to expand the mind's frontiers, the spiritual elder heralds the next phase of human and global development."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"I am beginning to feel as if living well were all that mattered. Not as the means to an end, but as an end in itself."
—Taking Retirement: A Beginner's Diary
"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
—Margery Williams, from The Velveteen Rabbit
"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The diminishments of old age school us in the art of humility and self-acceptance. Because we can't rely on our former attainments and on our physical strength, we must search more deeply within ourselves for a fund of inner strength and wisdom. Increased reflection and contemplation in elderhood, as taught by the world's mystical traditions, are invaluable in helping us befriend our hidden depths."
—Sister Ann
"An elder is a person who is still growing, still a learner,
Still with potential and whose life continues to have within
It promise for, and connection to, the future. An elder is still
In pursuit of happiness, joy, and pleasure, and her or his
birthright to these remains intact. Moreover, an elder is a
person who deserves respect and honor and whose work
it is to synthesize wisdom from long life experience and
formulate this into a legacy for future generations."
—Barry Barkan, Live Oak Living Center
Despite
The Cost of Living
It's Still Popular
"When a Great Adventure is offered, you don't refuse it."
—Amelia Earhart
"The purpose of life, after all is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."
—Eleanor Roosevelt
"Just to be
is a blessing
Just to live
is holy."
—Abraham Joshua Heschel
"When you have malevolent thoughts
Don't speak them, but
write them.
Write them in the sand
as close to the water
as possible."
—Yogi Desai
"On a paper in one pocket is written
'For me the world was created.'
On a paper in the other,
'I am but dust and ashes.'"
—Jewish mystical teaching
"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up."
—Rainer Maria Rilke
"Elders are the jewels of humanity that have been mined from the earth cut in the rough, then buffed and polished by the stonecutter.s art into precious gems that we recognize for their enduring value and beauty. Shaped with patience and love over the decades of refinement, each facet of the jewel reflects light that awakens our soul to intimations of its own splendor. We sense such radiance in our youth but we cannot contain it. It requires a lifetime.s effort to carve out the multifaceted structure that can display our hidden splendor in all its glory."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"Understanding others is knowledge
Understanding oneself is enlightenment
Conquering others is power
Conquering oneself is strength;
Contentment is wealth
Forceful conduct is willfulness;
Not losing one.s rightful place is to endure
To die but not be forgotten is longevity."
—Tao te ching 77(33)
"Youth is a gift of nature; aging is a work of art."
—Anonymous
"We are all happier when we are older. The young sow wild oats; the old grow sage."
—Winston Churchill
"Finally we have time to ripen.our season is long enough. It may be a gift from the planet because the planet needs us to keep evolving."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"If you believe you can hurt another person, then also believe you can heal another."
—R. Nachman of Bratslav
"People are like diamonds. Each part of ourselves is a different facet."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"Forgiveness presupposes remembering."
—Paul Tilloch (Not forgive and forget)
"Holding a grudge is like stabbing yourself to hurt the person behind you. Or picking up a hot coal."
—???
"Don't give yourself a spiritual hernia. Start small."
—Shaya
"Our minds are like tofu. They need marinating to take on the characteristics of our choices.be it sweet or sour, deep or shallow."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Reminiscence is no
mere escapist desire
to live in the past, as
some claim: rather
It should be regarded
as a major development
task for the elderly,
resulting in the integration that
will allow them to age well and die well."
—Robert Butler
"Old Age is not a defeat
But a victory,
Not a punishment,
But a privilege."
—Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Not forgiving is like a bungee cord—it keeps pulling us back."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"Listen to me, O house of Jacob.
Even to your old age I am he,
Even when you turn gray, I will
Carry you. I have made, and I will
Bear: I will carry and will save."
—Isaiah 46:3a & 4
"The glory of youth is their strength,
But the beauty of the aged is their
Gray hair."
—Proverbs 20:29
"Old age is not honored for length
Of time or measured by number
Of years; but understanding is.
Gray hair for anyone and blameless
Life is ripe old age."
—Wisdom of Solomon 4:8-9
"Even if you are on the right track,
You will get run over if you just
Sit there."
—Will Rogers(?)
"Gray hair is a crown of glory:
It is gained in a righteous life."
—Proverbs 16:31
"Wisdom is with aged: understanding
In length of days."
—Job 12:12
"Wisdom comes from good judgment.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Remembering waters my roots."
—Letty Cottin Progrebin
"To ridicule personal nostalgia is to ridicule the older generation, for who else has something to be nostalgic about but those with a sizable past?"
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin
"We are human beings—not doings."
—?
"Ageism is thinking that continuing to live is bad."
—?
"I may not be able to butter my bread, but I can still change the world."
—Maggie Kuhn
"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That how the light gets in."
—Leonard Cohn
"We are not alone in our worry about both the physical aspects of aging and the prejudices that exists towards the elderly which is similar to racism and sexism. What makes it different is that it also exists among those of us who are within this group or are rapidly approaching it."
—Jimmy Carter
"We should think of our lives as expanding, not contracting, and modern technology can help make this ambition easier to reach."
—Jimmy Carter
"All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them."
—Isak Dinesen
"Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty."
—Elie Wiesel
"To know how to grow older is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most challenging chapters in the great art of living."
—Ram Dass
"You are encouraged spiritually to go through transformation when you are young, so that when you are older you will have built up the resonance in yourself to be able to transform the changes without getting stuck in them."
—Ram Dass
"The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."
—Gandhi
"Spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics. Every human being has a sacred duty to protect the welfare of our Mother Earth."
—Leon Shenandoah, Native American Elder, in a UN Address
"If my outer world is degraded, then my inner world is degraded."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"Old age isn't an illness. It is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow towards the light."
—May Sarton
"Every story you tell is your own story."
—Joseph Campbell
"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not."
—Mark Twain
"If I were a tree, each story I would tell would be like a new root growing deep into Ground—nurturing and grounding me. What a gift a story is!"
—Dianne MacGinnes
"Through suffering, One receives understanding
Through understanding, One receives compassion.
Through compassion, One receives love."
—Attr. Wagner
"The trouble is, old age is not interesting until one gets there. It's a foreign country with an unknown language to the young and even to the middle-aged."
—May Sarton
"It is not incumbent on thee to finish the work, but neither art thou permitted to desist from it altogether."
—The Talmud
"The Shell must break before the bird can fly."
—Alfred Lord Tennyson
"We only learn our limits by going beyond them."
—Anonymous
"Awakening to Elderhood, we pour the distillates of our lives into other vessels, an act that not only seeds the future but that crowns our lives with worth and nobility."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"We ourselves feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."
—Mother Teresa
Mom: "I've done my share."
Sister Mary: "Who told you what your share is?"
"We live forward,
But
We understand backward."
—Kjerkegaard
"The group process is alchemy; it leads to the gold of inner transformation."
—Richard Johnson
"Loss is the engine of human growth; therefore, seniors have more growth opportunities."
—Richard Johnson
"Retirement is TO not FROM."
—Richard Johnson
"...no one expresses love/light/hope as I do, so if I do not express my love/light/hope, it will never be expressed."
—Richard Johnson
"Just as mind, body, spirit and heart need to be balanced, so do work, family, relationships, self, leisure and spirit."
—Anonymous
"When we are young and alone, we are lonely; when we are older, we are thankful for the solitude."
—Anonymous
"If we treat others as if they were as they could be, we may be attracting them into their own evolution."
—Anonymous
"Youth is a gift of nature; aging is a work of art."
—Anonymous
"Old age is often the time when we give the advice we didn't take when we were young."
—Anonymous
"If I'm afraid of older people, then I'm afraid of whom I'm about to become. I'm afraid of my future. People grow up fearing what they will become. But if we think of all of our life's experience, we have a huge 'fountain of wisdom.'"
—Anonymous
"Getting older is no guarantee of wisdom; it can be done with more or less maturity and grace."
—Anonymous
"Life is a story we are living and we keep writing the last chapter."
—Anonymous
"If the young have 'it all,' then someone doesn't 'have it.'"
—Anonymous
"Mentoring is extending our mortality. Passing on what we have learned. Growing older is mandatory. Growing up is optional. Eldering is not a matter of luck. It is a matter of intention."
—Shaya
"You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever."
—Anonymous
"When you are aware of your body, you are present."
—Buckminster Fuller
"Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."
—Dalai Lama
"God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."
—Jewish folk saying
"Awakening to Elderhood, we pour the distillate of our lives into other vessels, an act that not only seeds the future but that crowns our lives with worth and nobility."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
"Negative feelings are like stray cats.
The more you feed them,
The more they hang around."
—Joyce Rupp
"Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though to another dress
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day."
—Longfellow
"We shall not cease exploring
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know it for the first time.
—T.S. Elliot
"There are stars whose light reaches the earth only after they themselves have disintegrated and are no more. And there are men whose scintillating memory lights the world after they have passed from it. These lights which shine in the darkest night are these which illuminate for the path."
—Hannah Senesh
"What would it mean to us if we were able to set aside the broken machine metaphor of old age and instead see old age as a final unfolding, beautiful and unique?"
—Bill Thomas, The Eden Alternative
"The images our culture generates are designed to make you fell that aging is some kind of failure: that somehow God made a big mistake."
—Ram Dass
"Grief is an integral part of elder wisdom, a force that humbles and deepens our hearts, connects us to the grief of the world and enables us to be of help."
—Ram Dass
"Without remaining open to change, we can not remain open to life: this is the sometimes frightening truth which we must confront as we get older. The desire to control change is our greatest obstacle to wisdom."
—Ram Dass
"To forgive is an extended, expanded, strengthened, and empowered form of the verb 'to give.'"
—Doris Donnelly, Learning to Forgive
"[One must not only] add years to one's life, but add life to ones years."
—PTP Wong
"Discovery/creation of meaning through inner and spiritual resources is a promising way of transcending personal losses and despair in old age."
—PTP Wong
"Successful aging is 80% attitude and 20% everything else; therefore, it is attainable even by those who are frail and chronically ill."
—PTP Wong
"[quoting Viktor Frankl] the prospect of death motivates individuals to assume responsibility and respond to the opportunities life has to offer."
—PTP Wong
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
—Anonymous
"Our children are our elders in universe time. They are born into a more complete, more evolved universe than we can know except through their eyes."
—Buckminster Fuller
"But growing older has weathered me in a way that's no longer burdened by apprehension. It allows me to look and look and to occasionally have the delicious experience of seeing for the first time something remarkable that's always been there."
—Lucy Daniels
"The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast us."
—William James
"Blessed are the old people for they have come a long way.
Blessed are the young people, for they have a long way to go.
Blessed are the in-between people, for they are doing the work."
—Nelson Madela
"If you bring forth what is within you,
What you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, What you do not bring forth will destroy you.
—The Gospel according to Thomas
"An' most of us die... long before we're dead. An' what kills us is the terrible weight of all this unused life that we carry around."
—from the movie "Shirley Valentine"
"First, Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
Second, The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.
Third, Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know "why" I look this way. I've traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't paved.
Fourth, When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.
Fifth, You know you are getting old when every thing either dries up or leaks.
Sixth, I don't know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.
Seventh, One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young.
Eighth, One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been."
—Will Rogers, on growing older
"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
—e. e. cummings
"At fifteen I set my heart upon learning.
At thirty, I had planted my feet upon firm ground.
At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.
At sixty, I heard them with a docile ear.
At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right."
—Confucius, Analects 2.4
"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
—From SE Guild CC.Dec. '04+ #584 A Network of Mutuality
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
—From SE Guild CC.Dec. '04+ #584 A Network of Mutuality
"There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.
Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.
We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
"You know, we do it every day. Every morning we go out blinking into the glare of our freedom, into the wilderness of work and the world, making maps as we go, looking for signs that we're on the right path. And on some good days we walk right out of our oppressions, those things that press us down from the outside or (as often) from the inside; we shake off the shackles of fear, prejudice, timidity, closed-mindedness, selfishness, self-righteousness, and claim our freedom outright, terrifying as it is-our freedom to be human, and humane.
Every morning, every day, we leave our houses, not knowing if it will be for the last time, and we decide what we'll take with us, what we'll carry: how much integrity, how much truth-telling, how much compassion (in case somebody along the way may need some), how much willingness to change and to be changed, to grow and to be grown. How much faith and hope, how much love and gratitude-you pack these with your lunch and medications, your date book and your papers. Every day, we gather what we think we'll need, pick up what we love and all that we so far believe, put on our history, shoulder our experience and memory, take inventory of our blessings, and we start walking toward morning."
—Victoria Safford, "Walking Toward Morning"
"Ask not what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive...then go for it.
Because what the world needs is people
who have come alive!"
—Howard Thurman
