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It's the midlife crisis.

You're fifty and a bit, and one day you wake up and realise you will never be the female equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci, and no one will remember who you were after you die. Time is slipping away. Quicker than you ever thought it would. And gravity has overtaken your skin and flesh.

Is there a proverb, or succinct idiomatic phrase that expresses the realisation that time is fleeting and you haven't done the things you hoped to do when you were a young slip of a girl?

I know the idiom it's never too late, what I would like to know if there's an expression that conveys the fear it is too late.

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    I don't have a succinct saying, but if you don't already know it you might enjoy this poem. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Virgins,_to_Make_Much_of_Time
    – Spagirl
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 12:39
  • Proverbs would refer to what you have missed, not what you will never be able to do again. That would be a curse.
    – user66974
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 12:42
  • There are a few expressions in British English which are used as a kind of ironic understatement, 'I always wanted to be the female equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci, but I think I've left it a bit late', or 'I always imagined I'd be the next Einstein, but I reckon that boat's sailed.'
    – Spagirl
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 12:44
  • "There is a Fountain of Youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age". Sophia Loren
    – user66974
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 12:58
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    By way of backing up the 'missed the boat' idiom, this poem is a lovely, if sad, take on it. stevenkharper.com/missingtheboat.html
    – Spagirl
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 13:02

5 Answers 5

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I think you should ask for a quote, rather than a proverb, anyway, though not a perfect fit, but there's no time like the present may convey the idea of spending time in a fruitful way, especially if you are no longer young:

  • said to encourage someone to take action immediately instead of waiting.

(Cambridge Dictionary)

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Time and Tide wait for none.

never put off until tomorrow what you can do today (saying) (Cambridge Dictionary) ​

said to emphasize that you should not delay doing something if you can do it immediately

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Here's a poem that may be on-theme from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/missed-chances:

“I never cut my neighbor's throat; My neighbor's gold I never stole; I never spoiled his house and land; But God have mercy on my soul!

For I am haunted night and day By all the deeds I have not done; O unattempted loveliness! O costly valor never won!”

― Marguerite Ogden Bigelow Wilkinson

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It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts.

(Oscar Levant, pianist, composer, author, comedian, and actor)

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

(Sydney J. Harris, journalist)

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

Arthur Miller (playwright)

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

John Barrymore (actor)

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!

John Greenleaf Whittier (poet and abolitionist)

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.

Voltaire (author)

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

Charles Dickens

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.

Yiddish proverb

The first half of life is spent in longing for the second, the second half in regretting the first.

French Proverb

One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late.

Agatha Christie

Does any of these suit?

How did I find these? I googled

regrets proverb

As you can see, I got a pretty good harvest. But some of the phrases that turned up were totally useless. Best example of this: "I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." -- J. Edgar Hoover

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  • I've upvoted because I suppose you could call my malaise regret, but I don't say, "I wish I did that" or "I should have done that" because in my life I did take risks, proper life changing ones, and I worked hard so those risks could bear fruit, but I think I planted the fruit tree in the wrong season, or in the wrong terrain.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Apr 7, 2017 at 9:01
  • @Mari-LouA Me, I neglected to put the protecting thingie around the trunk of the young apple tree, and the voles (little rodents similar to mice) girdled it over the winter. I.e. they nibbled the bark all the way around the trunk, and that was the beginning of the end of the apple tree. The nectarine, on the other hand, is doing spectacularly well -- but all leaves and flowers, never any fruit, because it turns out we are in the wrong climate zone for nectarines. // I see what you mean. I reread your question and I realize now that none of my proposals focus on the fear that it is too late.
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 4:35
  • How's this: "While the grass grows, the steed starves," which supposedly means "Dreams or expectations may be realized too late" -- but don't ask me to explain why it means that! oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199539536.001.0001/…
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 4:47
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    Well, here's something: “As the years advance there is a new rational ground for the expectation that my life may become less fruitful" -- George Eliot. newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/middlemarch-and-me
    – aparente001
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 4:54
  • Thank you so much for the link to the NYM, it is a long article but I enoyed reading it immensely, and it has made me want to read Middlemarch, a book whose title I had only heard.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 6:40
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"Where have all the flowers gone?" by Pete Seeger

The story behind the song speaks of loss, over time:

I had been reading a long novel—”And Quiet Flows the Don”—about the Don River in Russia and the Cossacks who lived along it in the 19th century. It describes the Cossack soldiers galloping off to join the Czar’s army, singing as they go. Three lines from a song are quoted in the book: ‘Where are the flowers? The girls plucked them / Where are the girls? They’re all married / Where are the men? They’re all in the army.’ I never got around to looking up the song, but I wrote down those three lines.

...

The counselor added two actual verses: ‘Where have all the soldiers gone? / Gone to graveyards every one / Where have all the graveyards gone? / Covered with flowers every one.’

- Pete Seeger, quoted in performingsongwriter.com

The song's title is evocative of the feeling you describe, of time slipping away.

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