Mid Life Crisis Quotes

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There is no "mid" about it. Life is a crisis from the cradle to the grave.
Graham Joyce (How to Make Friends with Demons)
By the age of twenty, you know you're not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in- you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy and successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate... ...I mean, why do people live so long? What could be the difference between death at fifty-five and death at sixty-five or seventy-five or eighty-five? Those extra years... what benefit could they possibly have? Why do we go on living even though nothing new happens, nothing new is learned, and nothing new is transmitted? At fifty-five, your story's pretty much over.
Douglas Coupland (Player One: What Is to Become of Us (CBC Massey Lectures))
It’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s just a life crisis.
Alice Oseman (Solitaire (Solitaire, #1))
Evelyn stared into the empty ice cream carton and wondered where the smiling girl in the school pictures had gone.
Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe)
He has been reading (or rereading) a great many children's books as well, because the stories seem more story-like, though he is midly concerned this might be a symptom of an impending quarter-life crisis.
Erin Morgenstern (The Starless Sea)
Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits)
Everyone I meet now is at least ten years younger than me. I feel like Rip van Winkle with a bald spot.
Jaffe Cohen (The King of Kings and I: The Greatest Story Ever Kvetched!)
She said to me, over the phone She wanted to see other people I thought, Well then, look around. They're everywhere Said that she was confused... I thought, Darling, join the club 24 years old, Mid-life crisis Nowadays hits you when you're young I hung up, She called back, I hung up again The process had already started At least it happened quick I swear, I died inside that night My friend, he called I didn't mention a thing The last thing he said was, Be sound Sound... I contemplated an awful thing, I hate to admit I just thought those would be such appropriate last words But I'm still here And small So small.. How could this struggle seem so big? So big... While the palms in the breeze still blow green And the waves in the sea still absolute blue But the horror Every single thing I see is a reminder of her Never thought I'd curse the day I met her And since she's gone and wouldn't hear Who would care? What good would that do? But I'm still here So I imagine in a month...or 12 I'll be somewhere having a drink Laughing at a stupid joke Or just another stupid thing And I can see myself stopping short Drifting out of the present Sucked by the undertow and pulled out deep And there I am, standing Wet grass and white headstones all in rows And in the distance there's one, off on its own So I stop, kneel My new home... And I picture a sober awakening, a re-entry into this little bar scene Sip my drink til the ice hits my lip Order another round And that's it for now Sorry Never been too good at happy endings...
Eddie Vedder
The angst of adolescence is the fear the pretty Italian girls across the street will never come over. The crisis of mid-life is learning they never will.
Mark Darrah
when true purpose calls, double mindedness, confusion and frustration come along.
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
But what Torschlusspanik is intended to describe is that anxious, claustrophobic feeling that avenues and opportunities are shutting down. The notion that you haven’t done very much with your life, that you’ve missed the boat, that you’ve left it too late. Probably the closest term we have in English is mid-life crisis.
Fran Littlewood (Amazing Grace Adams)
A common and traditionally masculine marital problem is created by the husband who, once he is married, devotes all his energies to climbing mountains and none to tending to his marriage, or base camp, expecting it to be there in perfect order whenever he chooses to return to it for rest and recreation without his assuming any responsibility for its maintenance. Sooner or later this “capitalist” approach to the problem fails and he returns to find his untended base camp a shambles, his neglected wife having been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, having run off with another man, or in some other way having renounced her job as camp caretaker. An equally common and traditionally feminine marital problem is created by the wife who, once she is married, feels that the goal of her life has been achieved. To her the base camp is the peak. She cannot understand or empathize with her husband’s need for achievements and experiences beyond the marriage and reacts to them with jealousy and never-ending demands that he devote increasingly more energy to the home. Like other “communist” resolutions of the problem, this one creates a relationship that is suffocating and stultifying, from which the husband, feeling trapped and limited, may likely flee in a moment of “mid-life crisis.” The women’s liberation movement has been helpful in pointing the way to what is obviously the only ideal resolution: marriage as a truly cooperative institution, requiring great mutual contributions and care, time and energy, but existing for the primary purpose of nurturing each of the participants for individual journeys toward his or her own individual peaks of spiritual growth. Male and female both must tend the hearth and both must venture forth. As an adolescent I used to thrill to the words of love the early American poet Ann Bradstreet spoke to her husband: “If ever two were one, then we.”20 As I have grown, however, I have come to realize that it is the separateness of the partners that enriches the union. Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Life itself had become disembodied. My family, the spine of my days, had crumbled. I was lost in invertebrate time.
Joseph O'Neill (Netherland)
Screw the mid-life crisis Go have a mid-life spa day A mid-life quickie A midlife tiramisu But whatever you do DON'T give in to mid-life blues!
Sanjo Jendayi
There comes a time in one’s life, perhaps in middle age, when we stop and assess who we are, and the life we have.
Fennel Hudson (Fine Things: Fennel's Journal No. 8)
the struggle of midlife is fundamentally rooted in the idolatries of the heart.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Remember the biblical principle of idolatry, desire for a good thing becomes a bad thing when that desire becomes a ruling thing.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Midlife doesn’t introduce you to a new you; it forces you to admit who you have been all along.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Jack, I think I'm having a mid-life crisis. Oh Mom, you're way too old to be having a mid-life crisis.
Irene Rubaum-Keller
You can see it as a mid-life crisis or you can see it as a mid-life awakening.
Dan Pearce
On any given morning, I might not be able to list for you the facts I know about God. But I can tell you what I wish to commit myself to, what I want for the foundation of my life, how I want to see. When I stand with the faithful at Holy Comforter and declare that we believe in one God . . . I am saying, Let this be my scaffolding. Let this be the place I work, struggle, play, rest. I commit myself to this.
Lauren F. Winner (Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis)
Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one’s mid-life crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on will alone. This
Irvin D. Yalom (Love's Executioner)
This is the way it goes. In your mid-forties you have your first crisis of mortality (death will not ignore me); and ten years later you have your first crisis of age (my body whispers that death is already intrigued by me). But something very interesting happens to you in between. As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself: That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods, you may want to put it rather more forcefully. As in: OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!! ... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.
Martin Amis (The Pregnant Widow)
This is the way that it goes. In your mid forties you have your first crisis of mortality (death will not ignore me); and ten years later you have your first crisis of age (my body whispers that death is already intrigued by me). But something very interesting happens to you in between. As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get that sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing. And you sometimes say to yourself; That went a bit quick. That went a bit quick. In certain moods you may want to put it a bit more forcefully. As in: OY!! That went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!.... Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being, like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.
Martin Amis
Why do people have mid-life crises? It’s because they don’t know who they are. And suddenly they realise time is running out. They have to fight to be authentic, to be REAL. All the time, people are having breakdowns brought on by identity crises. They have lived their lives in bad faith. They have been fakes and phonies, frauds and impostors. They have impersonated human beings rather than actually being human beings. They have spent their whole lives in a state of alienation from themselves and from God. Isn’t it time we saved the human race from the controllers, the brainwashers, the identity constructors? People can never be free until they are free to become who they really are. As Nietzsche said, “We want to become those who we are – the new, the unique, the incomparable, those who impose on themselves their own law, those who create themselves!” Is that not the formula for a new, free world, a world of Supermen and Superwomen, a transformed world of individuals on the path to divinity? Revalue all values. Abolish Abrahamism. Abolish the control machine.
Adam Weishaupt (Jehovah: The First Nazi)
I am not alone. Existing in this melancholic world causes numerous individuals to feel remorseful and even harbor resentment. Contemplating the world fills me with melancholy. I sense a profound disconnection from the world. Feeling completely drained by my internal and external despair and indifference. I find myself filled with regret and eagerly await the conclusion. I believe my overwhelming anxiety has transformed into anhedonia and depression. Feelings of emptiness and not fitting in are common to all people. Feeling like an outsider hinders connection with others. Once quite the extrovert. I have always experienced a deep sense of disconnection, but at this stage of my life, numerous things have gone awry, making it almost unbearable.
Jonathan Harnisch
At a talk I gave at a church months later, I spoke about Charlie and the plight of incarcerated children. Afterward, an older married couple approached me and insisted that they had to help Charlie. I tried to dissuade these kind people from thinking they could do anything, but I gave them my card and told them they could call me. I didn't expect to hear from them, but within days they called, and they were persistent. We eventually agreed that they would write a letter to Charlie and send it to me to pass on to him. When I received the letter weeks later, I read it. It was remarkable. Mr. and Mrs. Jennings were a white couple in their mid-seventies from a small community northeast of Birmingham. They were kind and generous people who were active in their local United Methodist church. They never missed a Sunday service and were especially drawn to children in crisis. They spoke softly and always seemed to be smiling but never appeared to be anything less than completely genuine and compassionate. They were affectionate with each other in a way that was endearing, frequently holding hands and leaning into each other. They dressed like farmers and owned ten acres of land, where they grew vegetables and lived simply. Their one and only grandchild, whom they had helped raise, had committed suicide when he was a teenager, and they had never stopped grieving for him. Their grandson struggled with mental health problems during his short life, but he was a smart kid and they had been putting money away to send him to college. They explained in their letter that they wanted to use the money they'd saved for their grandson to help Charlie. Eventually, Charlie and this couple began corresponding with one another, building up to the day when the Jenningses met Charlie at the juvenile detention facility. They later told me that they "loved him instantly." Charlie's grandmother had died a few months after she first called me, and his mother was still struggling after the tragedy of the shooting and Charlie's incarceration. Charlie had been apprehensive about meeting with the Jenningses because he thought they wouldn't like him, but he told me after they left how much they seemed to care about him and how comforting that was. The Jenningses became his family. At one point early on, I tried to caution them against expecting too much from Charlie after his release. 'You know, he's been through a lot. I'm not sure he can just carry on as if nothing has ever happened. I want you to understand he may not be able to do everything you'd like him to do.' They never accepted my warnings. Mrs. Jennings was rarely disagreeable or argumentative, but I had learned that she would grunt when someone said something she didn't completely accept. She told me, 'We've all been through a lot, Bryan, all of us. I know that some have been through more than others. But if we don't expect more from each other, hope better for one another, and recover from the hurt we experience, we are surely doomed.' The Jenningses helped Charlie get his general equivalency degree in detention and insisted on financing his college education. They were there, along with his mother, to take him home when he was released.
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy)
She throws away the inedible toast and looks at me, her blue eyes sad. “I'm a bad cook.” My first inclination is to say, “You're just realizing this now?”, but I don't. Instead I shrug. “You're good at a lot of other things.” “I can't crochet either.” I purse my lips to keep from agreeing. “Well...you—” “And I can't sing. I don't even remember the shade of my natural hair color and I've had this outfit since the eighties.” I glance at her red top and tan pants. Yeah. Those should really go—along with a lot of other things in the house. “You're sort of making it hard for me to make you feel better when you keep tossing all the things you aren't good at, at me.” I brighten. “You can dance! You're a great dancer.” “I'm having a mid-life crisis.” “You're forty-six,” I scoff. “You're too young for that. I mean, maybe in four years...
Lindy Zart (Roomies)
Have no anxiety about anything,' Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track. Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you've gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest mid-East crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin to the effect that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you're not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head. Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don't see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps. But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. 'All life is suffering' says the first and truest of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, 'but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.' He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God's will or God's judgment or God's method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them—even in the thick of them—they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best. 'In everything,' Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that 'the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' The worst things will surely happen no matter what—that is to be understood—but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be "in Christ," as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there. That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, "Have no anxiety about anything." Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say, Rejoice!
Frederick Buechner
To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite disaster,” he said. “Reaction is no barrier to the radical. It is a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that danger is to offer a workable program of reconstruction, and the party to offer it is the party with clean hands.” He then introduced a crucial phrase: “I pledge you, I pledge myself,” FDR said, “to a New Deal for the American people.” The crisis was existential. “His impulse,” Winston Churchill wrote of FDR in the mid-1930s, “is one which makes toward the fuller life of the masses of the people in every land, and which, as it glows the brighter, may well eclipse both the lurid flames of German Nordic self-assertion and the baleful unnatural lights which are diffused from Soviet Russia.
Jon Meacham (The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels)
As I approach mid-life, I feel like the old boot that lands on Mayfair after an eight-hour game of Monopoly.
Fennel Hudson (Fine Things: Fennel's Journal No. 8)
I’d save my mommy issues for my mid-life crisis.
C.P. Harris (The Boy Who Loved Wicked)
A person who reaches mid-life, either without having successfully established himself in marital and occupational life, or having established himself by means of manic activity and denial with consequent emotional impoverishment, is badly prepared for meeting the demands of middle age, and getting enjoyment out of his maturity. In such cases, the mid-life crisis, and the adult encounter with the conception of life to be lived in the setting of an approaching personal death, will likely be experienced as a period of psychological disturbance and depressive breakdown. Or breakdown may be avoided by means of a strengthening of manic defenses, with a warding off of depression and persecution about aging and death, but with an accumulation of persecutory anxiety to be faced when the inevitability of aging and death eventually demands recognition. The compulsive attempts, in many men and women reaching middle age, to remain young, the hypochondriacal concern over health and appearance, the emergence of sexual promiscuity in order to prove youth and potency, the hollowness and lack of genuine enjoyment of life, and the frequency of religious concern are familiar
Irvin D. Yalom (Existential Psychotherapy)
Rae Lynn was a Gemini. And a night person. Her favorite drink was a strawberry margaritas and her favorite perfume was straight vanilla extract... Her favorite movie star used to be Mel Gibson, but now that he'd had such an obvious mid-life crisis, it was Matthew McConaughey and she felt too much loyalty to ER to even start on Grey's Anatomy. If she were a Crayola Crayon, she's be bluebell. And if she was a kind of weather, she's be the rain when it spits. She couldn't even remember her natural hair color, and she twirled spaghetti, not cut it. And if she knew the world was ending tomorrow she'd go out and eat a whole pecan pie and not care if it gave her a migraine. Jane didn't know if Rae Lynn preferred her men shy and inexperienced, but she hoped so. They all hoped so. If only Rae Lynn could see past Jimmy's deficits to the deeply kind and honorable man who dwelt inside.
Katherine Heiny (Early Morning Riser)
If your mid-semester crisis keeps you awake at night because you don’t think you’re good enough, just know that you are. You tried your best, and that’s all your dean expects of you. If you’re not perfect from the start, that’s okay. You have four years to get it right!
Joel B. Randall (Study, Sleep, Repeat: 130 Tips to Schedule Your College Life)
Devotion means putting in extra hours because you believe in something and you want to see it work. You believe in something with all your heart and are very passionate about it.
Richard Kuhns (Quick Tips on How to Over Come A Mid Life Crisis Now, The Middle Life Crisis Book (Self Esteem 2))
Not a mid-life crisis But a mid life, "Who am I?
Lowrey E. Gray (42)
The most important fact is not that there are one or three or four or six identifiable periods of crisis in a lifetime; rather, adulthood unfolds its promise in an alternating rhythm of expansion and contraction, change and stability. In human life as in the rest of nature, change accumulates slowly and almost invisibly until it is made manifest in the sudden form of fledging out or thawing or leaf-fall. It is the transition process rather than a thing called “a mid-life transition” that we must understand.
William Bridges (Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes)
The Precise Moment a Mid-Life Crisis Presents [10w] Our lugubrious past eventually catches up with our prosperous present.
Beryl Dov
That one special thing that you always wanted to accomplish never gets done because you lived each day under the tyranny of the urgent.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
The highest paid members of our society are not the people who teach us, heal us, or lead us in worship; the people we are willing to award with inordinate sums of money are the people who entertain us.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
The grief of midlife is not simply that we all collect things to regret, that we all fear getting old, or that we all mourn the demise of our dreams. We mourn the fact that midlife exposes our idols’ fundamental inability to deliver.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Suffering is an evil that an all-wise, all-righteous, and all-loving God uses for eternal good.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
One of the most dangerous delusions for each of us is the delusion of our own sovereignty. And one of our most dangerous idols is the idol of control.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
I just need enough to tide me over until I need more. —Bill Hoest
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods . . . the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195). If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.
Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development)
I was extremely happy. But I still had that niggling feeling inside. I needed something more. Then the realisation hit me suddenly at the end of last year; I was suffering a mid-life crisis, at the age of 33. I
George Mahood (Every Day Is a Holiday)
It was never meant to be this way. All other dreams were meant to be subservient to God’s dream. Yet in the pursuit of my “essential” dream, I have been slowly building my own personal tower to my own personal heaven. It has me. It defines me. It motivates me. It guides and directs me. It gives me a reason to get up in the morning and a reason to press on. Every day I get out my mortar and trowel and put another few courses of bricks on my personal tower to the sky. I’m still going to church, and I haven’t forsaken the faith, but in a profound and practical way, God is out of the picture. I am not in a place of overt rebellion to him, yet I am not serving him. I don’t have time for the Lord because all of my daily time and energy is invested in my dream. I was given the capacity to imagine so that everyday my “eyes” would be filled with him, yet now another dream
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but also more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Partha Sarathi Basu (Mid-career Crisis: Why Some Sail through while Others Don't)
Our affluence does not make us selfish; it simply enables us to afford more sophisticated expressions of selfishness. 
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
As a perk to being partner, he puts himself in charge of all the young, pretty female new hires. It’s a running joke at the office that he is living his mid-life crisis at work. He has one foot in retirement and the other foot sliding up the leg and under the skirt of some new associate.
Erin Brady (And The Winner Is... (The Adventures of Marty Peters))
How you doing?” I shake my head. “I think I’m having my mid-life crisis. I know what I am. I know what I do. But I don't feel like I’ll ever plug that hole in my chest where my dead heart sits. I’m unfinished and incomplete without love.
Tara Brown (Midnight Coven (Devil's Roses #7; Redeemers #2))
An utter success,' her stepdaughters confided to Margaret as they prepared to take their leave. 'The handsome king! That spoof!' Still the rain persisted, and the bishop had lost his hat. Maids danced in and out. Where was the bishop's hat? Alone at the window, Margaret didn't hear. The reflection of the parlor was yellow and warm. She watched it empty out. Then, an interruption. A voice came at her side: 'What do you look at with such interest, Lady Cavendish?' What did she see in the glass? She saw the Marchioness of Newcastle. She saw the aging wife of an aged marquess, without even any children to dignify her life.
Danielle Dutton (Margaret the First)
It was her concern and commitment to a friend which last year involved her in perhaps the most emotional period of her life. For five months she secretly helped to care for Adrian Ward-Jackson who had discovered that he was suffering from AIDS. It was a time of laughter, joy and much sorrow as Adrian, a prominent figure in the world of art, ballet and opera, gradually succumbed to his illness. A man of great charisma and energy, Adrian initially found it difficult to come to terms with his fate when in the mid-1980s he was diagnosed as HIV positive. His word as deputy chairman of the Aids Crisis Trust, where he first met the Princess, had made him fully aware of the reality of the disease. Finally he broke the news in 1987 to his great friend Angela Serota, a dancer with the Royal Ballet until a leg injury cut short her career and now prominent in promoting dance and ballet. For much of the time, Angela, a woman of serenity and calm practicality, nursed Adrian, always with the support of her two teenage daughters. He was well enough to receive a CBE at Buckingham Palace in March 1991 for his work in the arts--he was a governor of the Royal Ballet, chairman of the Contemporary Arts Society and a director of the Theatre Museum Association--and it was at a celebratory lunch held at the Tate Gallery that Angela first met the Princess. In April 1991 Adrian’s condition deteriorated and he was confined to his Mayfair apartment where Angela was in almost constant attendance. It was from that time that Diana made regular visits, once even brining her children Princes Willian and Harry. From that time Angela and the Princess began to forge a supportive bond as they cared for their friend. Angela recalls: “I thought she was utterly beautiful in a very profound way. She has an inner spirit which shines forth though there was also a sense of pervasive unhappiness about her. I remember loving the way she never wanted me to be formal.” When Diana brought the boys to see her friends, a reflection of her firmly held belief that her role as mother is to bring them up in a way that equips them for every aspect of life and death, Angela saw in William a boy much older and more sensitive than his years. She recalls: “He had a mature view of illness, a perspective which showed awareness of love and commitment.” At first Angela kept in the background, leaving Diana alone in Adrian’s room where they chatted about mutual friends and other aspects of life. Often she brought Angela, whom she calls “Dame A”, a gift of flowers or similar token. She recalls: “Adrian loved to hear about her day-to-day work and he loved too the social side of life. She made him laugh but there was always the perfect degree of understanding, care and solicitude. This is the point about her, she is not just a decorative figurehead who floats around on a cloud of perfume.” The mood in Mount Street was invariably joyous, that sense of happiness that understands about pain. As Angela says: “I don’t see death as sad or depressing. It was a great journey he was going on. The Princess was very much in tune with that spirit. She also loved coming for herself, it was an intense experience. At the same time Adrian was revitalized by the healing quality of her presence.” Angela read from a number of works by St. Francis of Assisi, Kahil Gibran and the Bible as well as giving Adrian frequent aromatherapy treatments. A high spot was a telephone call from Mother Teresa of Calcutta who also sent a medallion via Indian friends. At his funeral they passed Diana a letter from Mother Teresa saying how much she was looking forward to meeting her when she visited India. Unfortunately Mother Teresa was ill at that time so the Princess made a special journey to Rome where she was recuperating. Nonetheless that affectionate note meant a great deal to the Princess.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
The world we live in is a house of pain, and we cannot live in it without it touching us. You will never be smart enough to escape its grasp. From the violence of childbirth to cut fingers and scraped knees, from sibling mockery and peer rejection to familial brokenness, suffering is part of every phase of human existence. We enter life through suffering’s door and we exit life through suffering’s door.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Some days my mantra was I will stay in this marriage because I am a Christian and Christians stay, but other days, I thought: if the choices are Christianity or divorce then I will just have to embrace secular humanism because I am not even sure I believe any of this anymore and it is one thing to devote twenty minutes every morning to praying when you are not sure you believe anything anymore and it is another thing to organize your whole life around a marriage you don’t want to be in because a God who may or may not exist says let no man put asunder.
Lauren F. Winner (Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis)
Anomie is not a danger only for the young; it may surface in what is now conventionally called the "crisis of mid-life" or anywhere else.
Walter Brueggemann (Creative Word: Canon As a Model for Biblical Education)
HISTORY HAS BEEN used and abused more than once in the Ukraine Crisis, informing and inspiring its participants but also justifying violations of international law, human rights, and the right to life itself. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict, while arising unexpectedly and taking many of those involved by surprise, has deep historical roots and is replete with historical references and allusions. Leaving aside the propagandistic use of historical arguments, at least three parallel processes rooted in the past are now going on in Ukraine: Russia’s attempts to reestablish political, economic, and military control in the former imperial space acquired by Moscow since the mid-seventeenth century; the formation of modern national identities, which concerns both Russians and Ukrainians (the latter often divided along regional lines); and the struggle over historical and cultural fault lines that allow the participants in the conflict to imagine it as a contest between East and West, Europe and the Russian World.
Serhii Plokhy (The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine)
It is tempting to forget that there is an eternity or to think that it doesn’t make any difference in the present. Paul says just the opposite to the Corinthians; that if you only have Christ in this life, you are a person to be pitied. Eternity is the only thing that can give you a reason to continue.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
You are eternally loved by God; you are eternally his son or daughter; what he wants for you is always right and best; and what he has planned for you is immeasurably better than anything you could have dreamed for yourself.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Kelp forests could be one way to expand the seas’ annual carbon absorption capacity. Their near-surface seaweeds capture CO2 through photosynthesis. One of the fastest-growing forms of plant life, kelp expands by up to two feet in length per day. As Charles Darwin commented upon his kelp encounters during his mid-nineteenth-century voyage on the HMS Beagle: “I can only compare these great aquatic forests with terrestrial ones. The number of living creatures of all orders, whose existence depends on kelp, is wonderful.
John Doerr (Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now)
Sinners tend to move away from defining themselves in relationship to their Creator and begin defining themselves in relationship to the creation.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Rest will only be found as you are willing to believe that there is Someone who is controlling the details of your life, not only for his glory, but also for your good.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
God’s purpose in controlling the details of your life (the exact length of it and the locations where you live) is so that at any moment in the middle of your unfolding story, you can reach out and touch him, because his rule makes him very near to every one of us. What each of us really needs in our finite and faltering humanness is not so much the success of our plans, but God himself.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
74. We suggest that modern man’s obsession with longevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process. The “mid-life crisis” also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children
Theodore John Kaczynski (The Unabomber Manifesto: A Brilliant Madman's Essay on Technology, Society, and the Future of Humanity)
I'm having a mid-life crisis and I'm note even twenty.
Dylana Alleyne
As it turns out, the whole place was a purgatory for gray-haired widows and divorced men, content to eat frozen dinners and watch Deep Space Nine until they fell asleep alone and covered in potato chip crumbs.
Samantha Bee (I Know I Am, But What Are You?)
The goal is for your mid-life crisis to turn into a mid-life discovery.
Joan Anderson (A Weekend to Change Your Life)
Much in the same way that the “innovation” of highly processed foods in the mid-twentieth century led to a global health crisis, the unintended side effects of digital communication tools—a sort of social fast food—are proving to be similarly worrisome.
Cal Newport (Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World)
I don’t know,” Mom kept saying tearfully. “I don’t know, I just feel like it’s over.” “Our marriage?” Dad had asked after a long pause. “My life,” she’d told him. “I’m nothing but your wife. January’s mother. I’m nothing else, and I don’t think you can imagine how that feels. To be forty-two and feel like you’ve done everything you’re going to do.
Emily Henry (Beach Read)
Yet this grand and glorious God, for the purpose of redemption, becomes a man. The untraversable line between Creator and creature is crossed. The Word becomes flesh. The feet of God touch earth! The voice of God is heard on earth! The Lord comes as the Second Adam, the Word of Life, the Final Priest, and the Sacrificial Lamb. He satisfies God’s requirements, he atones for God’s anger, and he defeats death.
Paul David Tripp (Lost in the Middle: MidLife and the Grace of God: Mid-Life Crisis and the Grace of God)
Even if it is a mid-life crisis, it is not necessarily bad news. In fact, they have identified certain transitions in an adult life that happen to everyone and it is observed that you do question everything in your forties. It is a meaning making time.”,
Manik Bal (Whiskey And Suicide: And other stories (Odd Tales From Bombay And Bangalore))
There are never any problems only solutions to find
Oliver Very (WTF!! I'm having a MID LIFE CRISIS: failing in life)
The one thing I don't glean any information about is her husband, so I let my imagination go to town. I imagine he's called Hugo, works at an art college and specialises in multimedia (whatever that is). At the weekend he plays football and squash and is currently in training for the London Marathon. In addition to this he plays the saxophone, is younger than me, and permanently smells of cinnamon. Make no mistake, Hugo is a right tosser.
Mike Gayle (Turning Forty)
The one think i don't glean any information about is her husband, so I let my imagination go to town. I imagine he's called Hugo, works at an art college and specialises in multimedia (whatever that is). At the weekend he plays football and squash and is currently in training for the London Marathon. In addition to this he plays the saxophone, is younger than me, and permanently smells of cinnamon. Make no mistake, Hugo is a right tosser.
Mike Gayle (Turning Forty)
It wouldn't be practical to have sections called "Dog Stories", "Horse Stories", "Mid-life Crisis and Adultery", "Writers and Artists Struggling to Discover Themselves", "People in Past Eras Who Think and Talk Just Like Modern Americans", and "Reminiscences of Childhoods in Which Nothing Happened", even though these are all fairly popular themes for fiction.
Orson Scott Card (How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy)
Jack Horner was the last steward of Glastonbury Abbey, and that he was sent to Henry VIII to offer him the deeds to ten manors as a peace offering. The deeds were hidden inside a pie in case of highwaymen, until Jack put in his thumb and pulled out ‘the plumb’ for himself - Mells Manor.
Mike Carden (The Full English: Pedalling through England, Mid-Life Crisis and Truly Rampant Man-Flu (Bike Ride Books Book 1))
As the years pass, problems that we initially ignored or brushed aside demand to be acknowledged. This relates to how having a good story relates to having a good life. Life satisfaction relates to telling a meaningful story about where we are and where we're headed. In mid life more than ever we need a story that has coherence and meaning. The questions we ask ourselves-Am I progressing or standing still? Am I excited or just going through the motions?-concern our story and our relationships. Identify as one writer put it, is the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. When our story isn't working our identity feels as if its in crisis.
Daphne de Marneffe
Even during a mid-life crisis do not deviate from your goal. History remembers only those who succeed.
Hockson Floin