Various Penang NGOs are celebrating Senior Citizens’ Day this week.
Let us show our appreciation to the seniors who have sacrificed their lives for us.
Although Senior Citizens’ Day is a wonderful way to show our appreciation for the contributions
seniors have made to our lives, the community or the country, it is very important that they not be
forgotten the rest of the year. Often members of the older generations spend much of their time alone;
making time for telephone calls, visits and time spent together will give us priceless memories in the
years to come. Remember that these ones have been through a life time of experiences. Life, death,
war, depression, grief, joy, loneliness and companionship. They have worked to raise families, worked
to support them and society, paid their taxes and their ‘dues’ and believe me they DESERVE it.
They are a national treasure!!!! Above all, BE KIND.
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ELDERS QUOTES
* Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.– Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) |
Every time I think that I’m getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.- Lillian Carter
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* I am an old man, but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life. — Pablo Casals |
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* Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation. |
As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man
that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body,
but can never be so in mind.– Marcus Tullius Cicero
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We’ve put more effort into helping folks reach old age than into helping them enjoy it.– Frank A. Clark
| * I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. — Albert Einstein |
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* I’m saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am. — Dwight D. Eisenhower |
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* As we grow old…the beauty steals inward. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health
is probably the deadliest. — Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy, 1980
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* Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. — Benjamin Franklin |
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* Aging is not “lost youth” but a new stage of opportunity and strength. |
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“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving,
and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in your life you will have been all of these.”
— Dr. Robert H. Goddard (American rocket engineer 1882-1945)
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* It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. — Hubert Humphrey |
| * “I can think of no better way of redeeming this tragic world today than love and laughter. Too many of the young have forgotten how to laugh, and too many of the elders have forgotten how to love. Would not our lives be lightened if only we could all learn to laugh more easily at ourselves and to love one another.” — Theodore Hesburgh |
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A man ninety years old was asked to what he attributed his longevity. I reckon, he said,
with a twinkle in his eye, it because most nights I went to bed and slept
when I should have sat up and worried.– Dorothea Kent
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* Old age is not a disease – it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses. There must be a goal at every stage of life! There must be a goal! Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week. |
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The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven’t changed in seventy or eighty years.
Your body changes, but you don’t change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
— Doris Lessing
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“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
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You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence,
as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.
— Douglas MacArthur
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Age is…wisdom, if one has lived one’s life properly.
— Miriam Makeba
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Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
— W. Somerset Maugham
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* If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life. — Margaret Mead |
* “The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown…
The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask,
but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted
to work with them on the answers.”– Margaret Mead
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Don’t just count your years, make your years count.
— Ernest Meyers
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We are not limited by our old ages; we are liberated by it.
— Stu Mittleman
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Preparation for old age should begin not later than one’s teens.
A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.
–Arthur E. Morgan
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I never feel age…If you have creative work, you don’t have age or time.
— Louise Nevelson (1900 – 1988)
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The old — like children — talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience
which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one’s beloved,
the only ears that can ever hear one’s secrets are one’s own!– Eugene O’Neill
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One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding
relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself
as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.
— Harry A. Overstreet
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Live your life and forget your age.
— Norman Vincent Peale
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Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles
as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character. — Ralph B. Perry
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He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age,
but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.
— Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)
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Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live,
and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious,
and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end. — Jean Paul Richter
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I want to awaken the passion and creativity of youth, combine it with the wisdom, experience and insight of elders, and transform our world.” |
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* “To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.”
— Bertrand Russell |
It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true.
As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.– George Sand (1804 – 1876)
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“Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality
of which youth is incapable, precisely, the balance and wisdom that come from long perspectives
and broad foundations”– George Santayana (Spanish born American Philosopher, Poet and Humanist )
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Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
— George Santayana (1863 – 1952)
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“Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives,
and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
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* With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals? |
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life,
as not to receive new information from age and experience.
— Terence
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* None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm |
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder,
the unfailing child-like appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living.
In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station;
so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power
from men and from the infinite, so long are you young. — Samuel Ullman
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* The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. |
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20 WAYS TO APPRECIATE THE SENIOR CITIZENS IN YOUR LIFE
1) ALWAYS treat them with respect and good manners no matter how they react. You don’t know what they are dealing with.
2) Send them a card or a postcard once a month if you know where they live or even drop it in their mailbox. Many seniors still love snail mail and believe me it is so heartwarming to get a pretty card in the mail.
3) Cook a meal for them once and a while, nothing fancy just a casserole or maybe a cake.
4) Organize a busy bee with some of your friends and come round and do some gardening and some minor home repairs.
5) Walk their dog for them, if they have one.
6) Offer to take them out for coffee and cake, Your treat every once in a while, or once a week even.
7) Treat EVERY senior like they are your own Grandparent. You would want your own Grandees treated with love and respect so do it yourself.
8) Offer to read for them if they have sight problems.
9) Offer to do their ‘running around’. You know errands etc.
10) Give of your TIME which is a valuable resource in this day and age especially for a senior.
11) Be kind, even if you don’t know them, smile, nod or something, it is appreciated by most
12) Help them with a door, picking up something they’ve dropped, be kind
13) If they’re a neighbor, introduce yourself and offer to help them with a little chore they need done, be kind
14) Don’t play pranks for tricks, just because some older folks just stare at you doesn’t mean that they are mean, be kind.
15) Don’t get mad if you think they don’t know how to drive, yes, some have trouble, but try to understand, it could be you someday, be kind.
16) Don’t join in with your friends who laugh and tell stories of what grandma or grandpa is like, they have lived a long life and been through things you’l never know, be kind.
17) Local paper would let a younger person do a “appreciate aging” story every week, just picking a random person and getting an interesting story about their life, be kind.
18) Don’t laugh at them when others younger do, it’s not funny and hurts their feelings, be kind.
19) Try to see that they all have our own stories, and no matter what age they are. They still have values, feelings and our own pains just like you do, be kind.
20) Treasure the older ones. No, they are not perfect anymore than any other human being, but they have lived, loved, cried and laughed, they’re not that much different than you, be kind.
Taman Sri Nibong RA Log 
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