A beautiful woman should always have at the back of her mind that her ravishing appearance is only an ephemeral quality. When she wakes up in the morning, looks into the mirror, and notices that something is fading away, she knows that the time is ripe for marriage. She should be careful of who she takes into her life because the union is going to be everlasting.

— Michael Bassey Johnson

Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.

— Gabriel García Márquez

Age is a hell of a price to pay for wisdom

— George Carlin

Aging is not easy, Senghor Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Love must always meet its unwanted end.

— Yann Martel

All age is a kind of tiredness, I think. When you’re young, the lines never show. Every morning you wake unmarked, wiped clear by sleep. One day, though, you see lines that itch, as though some crumb of existence has been creased into your skin. They can never be smoothed away, and after a while you forget that this heavy, irritable feeling wasn’t always there.

— Amanda Craig

Almost any age is better than twenty-two.

— David Rakoff

A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realization that you can't make old friends.

— Christopher Hitchens

Among the worst things about growing old is the loss of those irreplaceable friends who added richness and depth to your life.

— Pat Conroy

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress

— W.B. Yeats

And I seemed to see myself aging as swiftly as a day-fly. But the idea of aging was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that had always protected me from all I was always condemned to be.

— Samuel Beckett