The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
Madeleine L'Engle in The New York Times (1985)

To take ageing as a manifestation of God's grace (instead of some awful crisis that needs to be eliminated) is to open the door to the fullness of human life - to a life of the praise of God.
Ronald Hecker Cram, Listening

To accept all experience as raw material out of which the human spirit distills meanings and values is a part of the meaning of maturity.
Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart.

The past does not exist. The future has not begun. The present is an infinitely small point in time in which the already nonexistent past meets the imminent future. At this point, which is timeless, a person's real life exists.
The Talmud

Society turns away from the aged worker as though he belonged to another species. That is why the whole question is buried in a conspiracy of silence. Old age exposes the failure of our entire civilization.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age

If I cannot work or rise from my chair or my bed, love remains to me. I can pray.
Father Congreve

The challenge of ageing is waiting with an ever-greater patience and an ever-stronger expectation. It is living with an eager hope. It is trusting that through Christ "we have been admitted into God's favor... and look forward exultantly to God's glory" (Romans 5:2)
Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

Both today and throughout history, the class struggle governs the manner in which old age takes hold of a man: there is a great gulf between the aged slave and the aged patrician, ...and these two classes are brought into being by the conflict between the exploiters and the exploited. Any statement that claims to deal with old age as a whole must be challenged, for it tens to hide this chasm.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age

I cannot remember a time, before my sixties, when the consciousness of happiness would sweep over me and...offer me a passing sensation very close to glee.
Caroline Heilbrun, The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty

As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence, and we become misers in this respect.
William Hazlett

The harder we work to conceal our age, the more we reveal it.
Tertullian, The Apparel of Women 3rd century

I asked Elena whether she still loved me now that I am getting older. She said, "Old has nothing to do with it."
Edmund Wilson

Four stages of growth in Christian maturity:
Love of self for self's sake
Love of God for self's sake
Love of God for God's sake
Love of self for God's sake
St. Bernard of Clairvoix