Favorite Quotes
Right-Sizing and Moving Forward
Here are some of my favorite quotes related to the later life, right-sizing transitions and opening the door to living and aging fully and successfully.
Don’t fear change, embrace it.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The challenge is to be true to each stage of life.
- Leo Buscaglia
Change can happen at any time, but transition comes along when one chapter of your life is over and another is waiting in the wings to make its entrance.
- William Bridges, “The Way of Transition”
Active aging requires us to go on living life to the full no matter how differently.
- Joan Chittester, “The Gift of Years”
There is pain in staying the same, and there’s pain in change. Pick the one that moves you forward.
- Earnie Larsen
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
- Karen Kaiser Clark
Life calls for full living….We succeed when we keep adapting to change and reengaging vitally, according to who we are at this time, and what we value now.
- John S. Murphy, “The Joy of Old”
The most effective way to cope with change is to help create it.
- L.W. Lynett
Of this I am quite sure: anyone who thinks of his or her old age as an event to be prepared for is more likely to have a more fruitful old age than one who has not thought that way. Whether one’s gifts and opportunities are great or small, my advice would be – prepare!
- Robert Greenleaf from his essay, “Old Age: The Ultimate Test of Spirit”
It is the forward looking, active engagement with life and with other human beings that is so critical to growing old well.
- John Rowe, M.D. and Robert Kahn, Ph.D., “Successful Aging”
“You can’t take it with you” applies in a figurative way to all of life’s turning points, not just dying. You have to let go, to make an ending. To find the new, you must relinquish the old.
- William Bridges, “The Way of Transition”
Autumn asks that we prepare for the future – that we be wise in the ways of garnering and keeping. But it also asks that we learn to let go – to acknowledge the beauty of sparseness.
- B.W. Overstreet
To ask how little, not how much, can I get along with. To say – is it necessary? – when I am tempted to add one more accumulation to my life.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Although I can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, I believe with soulful certainty that there is a direct correlation between the amount of discontent, discomfort, and pain you are experiencing in your life right now and the amount of unwanted but not discarded possessions – or emotional attachments – you’re holding onto and storing.
- Sarah Ban Breathnach, “Moving On”
Without releasing the fruits of one season, you cannot blossom into the next.
- William Bridges
Into this part of life we travel light….When I look around the crowded room and wonder why I am keeping the large desk when a smaller one would do just as well, something inside of me is beginning to change. When three sets of dishes are too many, I have begun to need more than just things. When the house is too crowded, and the car is too big and the perfect lawn too much of a bother, I have begun a whole new adventure in life.
- Joan Chittester, “The Gift of Years
Life is what you make it, always has been, always will be.
- Grandma Moses
Make the best use of what is in your power, take the rest as it comes.
- Epictetus, Greek philosopher
Each period of life has its own purpose. The task of this period of life is not simply to endure the coming of the end of time. It is to come alive in ways I have never been alive before.
- Joan Chittester, “The Gift of Years”
When it comes to aging, I have my thing all laid out. If I am physically able to do it, I intend to stay alive my whole life.
- Lawrence Jones
What I believe can redeem old age, as indeed the whole of life, is a passionate commitment to living as fully as possible, whatever the restrictions; to enjoying whatever is there to be enjoyed; to laughing at whatever is there to be laughed at. Intensity is what matters.
- Monica Furlong, “Reflections on Aging and Spiritual Growth”
