90 Best Uplifting Aging Gracefully Quotes

We have many negative thoughts and assumptions about getting older. As visual signs of youthfulness start to fade, it’s easy to start overthinking your aging process, to become anxious about your appearance, and to start fearing the future. Here are 90 uplifting aging gracefully quotes to change your attitude around inevitable aging!

Aging is a natural part of life, and it simply means you have more years of lovely memories behind your back. However, society might make us feel “not up to standards” whenever we start developing wrinkles, no matter how elegant we look or how gracefully we age.

It’s all in your head and the way you see life defines whether you choose to live gracefully or die scowling. I know people on the verge of 50 who sit and complain all day and think life is over. I also know 60+ people who are full of life and tell stories about their recent skydiving experiences.

Quarter-life crisis, as well as a midlife crisis, are so common because people don’t have a healthy mindset around aging. This might sound ridiculous, but even some people in their 20s often think they are “too old” for something.

All these aging gracefully quotes are here to uplift you and shift your mindset into appreciating your age and everything that comes with it. There are lots of beautiful quotes on this list that will make you look at your wrinkles in a new light, and be proud of your long life.

If you like these positive aging quotes, please share them with your lovely old friends with whom you age gracefully together! Maybe they need some aging-related encouragement too.

Note for nerds like me: If you are wondering whether it’s “aging gracefully” or “ageing gracefully”, it depends on where you live. “Aging” is common in American English, while “ageing” is the default spelling in British English. In this collection of uplifting quotes about getting older, you’ll see both versions of this word, as I’m quoting people from all over the world.

With that said, here are the best uplifting aging gracefully quotes!

Top 10 uplifting quotes about aging gracefully

1. Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

2. Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better! – Ingrid Bergman

3. I am so happy with the riches of my advanced peak age that, contrary to Faust, I would not wish to return to youth. – Robert Muller

4. Aging is not the process of making you old and ugly, aging is the process of making you bold and beautiful. – Dr.P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

5. There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. – Sophia Loren

6. My youthful heart still holds the buoyancy of promise. Even though it is scarred by the ravages of time, there is still hope and possibilities to explore. – Andrew Pacholyk

7. Age is just a number. Life and aging are the greatest gifts that we could possibly ever have. – Cicely Tyson

8. Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. – Franz Kafka

9. Aging gracefully means being flexible, being open, allowing change, enjoying change, and loving yourself. – Wendy Whelan

10. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? – Satchel Paige

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Positive aging gracefully quotes

No matter how old you are, being positive will always make you look prettier and more youthful. These positive quotes on aging gracefully will make you smile:

11. I am far too busy enjoying life to be limited by acting my age. – Ieda Jonasdottir Herman

12. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. – Max Ehrmann

13. From my perspective, there’s no reason to be afraid of aging, because if you age, you’re lucky! The alternative is death. – Drew Barrymore

14. By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it. – George Burns

15. Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been. – Jimmy Buffet

16. Aging gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking like a wreck. Don’t worry girls, look like a wreck, that’s the way it goes. – Jeanne Moreau

17. Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. – Benjamin Franklin

18. Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it. – Clint Eastwood

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Inspirational quotes about aging gracefully

Here are some beautiful aging gracefully quotes to inspire you to feel young and full of life!

19. The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you’re wrinkled. – Maya Angelou

20. We can’t avoid age. However, we can avoid some aging. Continue to do things. Be active. Life is fantastic in the way it adjusts to demands; if you use your muscles and mind, they stay there much longer. – Charles H. Townes

21. I’m not opposed to aging – even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I’m proud of my age. I’m proud that I’ve survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I’ll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind… for however long it lasts. – Donna Lynn Hope

22. Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. – Samuel Ullman

23. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. – Henry Ford

24. Aging does not make women powerless objects of pity but colorful and entertaining individuals and, on occasion, fire-breathing dragons that wise people don’t cross.

Florence King

25. I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward. – May Sarton

26. I’m not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You’re as old as you feel. – Henri Frederic Amiel

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Beautiful aging gracefully quotes

These powerful quotes on aging gracefully will remind you how beautiful you are, inside and out!

27. Your face is marked with lines of life, put there by love and laughter, suffering and tears. It’s beautiful. – Lynsay Sands

28. With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. – William Shakespeare

29. The years have touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her youth had not faded; it only hung more quietly on its stem. – Henry James

30. Aging has a wonderful beauty and we should have respect for that. – Eartha Kitt

31. Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. – George Sand

32. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. – Frank Lloyd Wright

33. Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be. – Lauren Hutton

34. There’s no such thing is aging, but maturing and knowledge. It’s beautiful, I call that beauty. – Celine Dion

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Funny quotes about aging gracefully

You are never too old to have fun! Let these funny aging quotes make you laugh!

35. We look like a couple of gutshot iguanas! – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

36. Middle age is like summer break – it’s over too soon. – Michael Ray Smith

37. Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now. – Bob Dylan

38. Just because you’re grown up and then some doesn’t mean settling into the doldrums of predictability. Surprise people. Surprise yourself. – Victoria Moran

39. Age is merely the number of years the world has been enjoying you! – Unknown

40. I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face lifts until my ears meet.

Rita Rudner

41. Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional! – Walt Disney

42. When you’re seventy-five, you are still going to be you. – Linda Gray

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Wise quotes about aging and life

Old age doesn’t only show up in wrinkles, but also in wise decisions, thoughts, and smarter choices. Here are the best wise quotes about aging and life:

43. Ageing is just another word for living. – Cindy Joseph

44. At our core, most of us are still the same as we were when we were young. It’s just a matter of what we’ve collected around ourselves from our experiences to obstruct what’s at the center. – Scaylen Renvac

45. Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again. – Eleanor Roosevelt

46. It’s not how old you are, it’s how you are old. – Jules Renard

47. It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone. – Andy Rooney

48. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age. – Thomas Bailey Aldrich

49. No age of life is inglorious. Youth has its merits, but living to a ripe old age is the true statement of value. Aging is the road that we take to discern our character. Fame and fortune can elude us, but character is immortal. We must encounter a sufficient variety of experiences including both failures and accomplishments in order to gain nobility of character. – Kilroy J. Oldster

50. We are always the same age inside. – Gertrude Stein

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Best quotes on how to age gracefully

51. Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life. – Kitty O’Neill Collins

52. My face carries all of my memories. Why would I erase them? – Diane Von Furstenberg

53. And there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my frost-bound garden, in spite of my years and children. – Elizabeth von Arnim

54. The trick is to age honestly and gracefully and make it look great so that everyone looks forward to it. – Emma Thompson

55. As much as I loathe this aging thing, I’m beginning to recognize that I am now a healthier person in terms of self-worth and knowing who I am and where I fit in the world. That’s been a good trade-off for the wrinkles. – Patty Duke

56. When it comes to staying young, a mind-lift beats a face-lift any day. – Marty Buccella

57. Older women are like aging strudels – the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling has come at last into its own.

Robert Farrar Capon

58. Everyone will be old. We must grow old gracefully whoever we are. – Kazeronnie Mak

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Getting old gracefully quotes

Here are some inspirational quotes to erase your fear of getting old:

59. Something pretty… that’s just the surface. People worry so much about aging, but you look younger if you don’t worry about it. – Jeanne Moreau

60. Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest. – Marilyn Ferguson

61. Aging happy and well, instead of sad and sick, is at least under some personal control. We have considerable control over our weight, our exercise, our education, and our abuse of cigarettes and alcohol. With hard work and/or therapy, our relationships with our spouses and our coping styles can be changed for the better. A successful old age may lie not so much in our stars and genes as in ourselves. – George E. Vaillant

62. Age is not how old you are, but how many years of fun you’ve had. – Matt Maldre

63. I love wood. I love its permanence, its way of changing hue over the years, its way of expanding and contracting, of moving or aging and growing better and more beautiful with time. – David Linley

64. I’m not old. I’ve just been young for a very long time. – Karen Salmansohn

65. The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully. – Eric Hoffer

66. Some things get better with age. Like me.

Keith Richards

Uplifting quotes on getting older and wiser

These uplifting quotes have nothing to do with lifting your face up! They are going to lift your mood up, if you let them, as they all talk about getting not just older but wiser!

67. The trick to aging gracefully is to enjoy it. – Unknown

68. It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily. – Arnold Palmer

69. You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing. – George Bernard Shaw

70. Wear your years with pride, like a badge of honor, for you have conquered. You have thrived. You have survived! – Ann Landers

71. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. – Mitch Albom

72. Forget about aging gracefully, focus instead on aging gratefully. – Unknown

73. Aging is an inevitable process. I surely wouldn’t want to grow younger. The older you become, the more you know; your bank account of knowledge is much richer. – William Holden

74. The more candles on my cake, the more exercise I get blowing them out. – Donna Lynn Hope

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Famous quotes about aging gracefully

Nobody can avoid aging, not even celebrities. Here are the best quotes on aging gracefully from famous personalities:

77. We don’t grow older, we grow riper. – Pablo Picasso

75. If you are pining for youth I think it produces a stereotypical old man because you only live in memory, you live in a place that doesn’t exist. Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been. – David Bowie

76. Some old people keep young at heart in spite of wrinkles and gray hairs, can sympathize with children’s little cares and joys, make them feel at home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and receiving friendship in the sweetest way. – Louisa May Alcott

78. Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. – Benjamin Franklin

79. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles! – Ralph Waldo Emerson

80. Know that you are the perfect age. Each year is special and precious, for you shall only live it once. Be comfortable with growing older. – Louise Hay

81. I have made a rule about such things, which I commend to you, young man: As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, DO IT. – Margaret Deland

82. Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.

Carl Jung

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Uplifting quotes for gracefully aging women

Women usually put a lot of work into aging gracefully, investing in various cosmetic products and procedures while still aiming to make it look “natural”. Most men have no idea how much daily effort it takes us to look naturally beautiful!

These uplifting quotes are for women who age gracefully:

83. No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart. – Robert A. Heinlein

84. And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows! – Audrey Hepburn

85. Please don’t retouch my wrinkles. It took me so long to earn them. – Anna Magnani

86. Why are people afraid of getting older? You feel wiser. You feel more mature. You feel like you know yourself better. You would trade that for softer skin? Not me! – Anna Kournikova

87. I didn’t want to let women down. One of the stereotypes I see breaking is the idea of aging and older women not being beautiful. – Annie Leibovitz

88. I like the woman you became better than the girl you were. I like the story you’ve written on your face. – Joanna Bourne

89. The silvered glamour of the Woman of the Winter Moon may be woman in her greatest power, woman in her guise as Elemental, as Force of Nature. This is woman to be revered. She is a concentration of feminine wisdom gathered and concentrated over the years, blended with the astral knowledge of the soul-star, and blessed by the traditions of the Sacred Feminine that she has made herself, or resurrected from Time, and passed living and intact to her daughters. – Elizabeth S. Eiler Ph.D.

90. If I can challenge old ideas about aging, I will feel more and more invigorated. I want to represent this new way. I want to be a new version of the 70-year-old woman. Vital, strong, very physical, very agile. I think that the older I get, the more yoga I’m going to do. – Jamie Lee Curtis

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Final thoughts about aging gracefully

The goal of this collection of inspirational quotes about aging gracefully is to remind you to not be defined by the number of years that passed since your birth date. After all, age is just a number, so focus on filling every year you have left with beautiful memories and joyful moments!

I hope these quotes help you get rid of any trace of fear of getting older and you start welcoming your wonderful future with open arms! Don’t resist change, appreciate it and be proud of every wrinkle you earned! Stay positive and learn to emphasize your beautiful features instead of focusing on the flaws. This is what it means to age gracefully!