Random Reflections on Growing Old

Excerpts from:
Random Reflections on Growing Old, compiled by Edna B. McBride
This is a small blue hand yarn tied book published by Gateway Printing, Seattle, date unknown (very old book)

Let me grow lovely growing old,
So many fine things do:
Laces and ivory and gold
And silks need not be new.

And there is healing in old trees;
Old streets a glamour hold;
Why should not I as well as these
Grow lovely growing old?

The Old Woman

As the white candle in a holy place,
So is the beauty of an aged face;
As the spent radiance of the winter sun,
So is the woman with her travail done,
Her brood gone from her, and her thoughts as still
As the waters under a ruined mill.

In youth, mistakes seem irreparable, calamities intolerable, disappointments unbearable. But mistakes can often be set right, calamities may have compensation, and a disappointment is often of itself a rich incentive to try again.

Much more important than adding years to one’s life, is adding life to one’s years.

Beauty in youth is but an accident of nature; beauty in age bespeaks a beautiful life.

Ida M. Tarbell at 75 said, “Growing old is living in the past. Living in the present is the secret of not growing old.”

They used to say that a woman is as old as she looks, and a man as old as he feels. I believe thy are both as old as they think.

“Daddy, are you getting taller and taller? ‘Cause the top of your head is poking up through your hair!”

We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count. – Emerson.

If you keep your spirits high you won’t need to have your face lifted.

For a long life, be moderate in all things, -- but don’t miss anything.

Probably the greatest ten years in a woman’s life are the years from twenty-eight to thirty.

When Oliver Wendell Holmes was still on the Supreme Court Bench, he and Justice Brandeis took daily walks. On one occasion Holmes, then ninety-two, paused to gaze in frank admiration at a beautiful young girl. “Ah,” he sighed, “what wouldn’t I give to be seventy again!”

The great essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.