Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. ~Chili Davis
Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself. ~Tom Wilson
Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~Dinah Craik
In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups. In old age, we yearn to be kids. It just seems that all would be wonderful if we didn't have to celebrate our birthdays in chronological order. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. ~Robert Louis Stevenson, "Virginibus Puerisque II," Virginibus Puerisque, 1881
Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. ~Chili Davis
First you forget names; then you forget faces; then you forget to zip up your fly; and then you forget to unzip your fly. ~Branch Rickey
A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again. ~Enid Bagnold
Are we not like two volumes of one book? ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
Henry James once defined life as that predicament which precedes death, and certainly nobody owes you a debt of honor or gratitude for getting him into that predicament. But a child does owe his father a debt, if Dad, having gotten him into this peck of trouble, takes off his coat and buckles down to the job of showing his son how best to crash through it. ~Clarence Budington Kelland
Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. ~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone
Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray, and Diet Coke, it has become routine for people in the civilized world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once. ~Dave Barry, "Your Disintegrating Body," Dave Barry Turns 40, 1990
