I would take each of your sentences and make a little list of the things you think it might be saying. Make sure not to just summarize or restate what it is saying. In making your list of ideas, think of how you would finish these two sentence starters:

• This quote shows...
• This quote is important because...

In looking at your first quote, I might have a list that looks like this:

• Man must thrive on human interaction.
• The stage in life wherein that interaction has potential to drop is in elderly years, after retirement.
• Lack of interaction cripples the elderly possibly more than disease or faulty muscle tone.
• Living alone deteriorates one's social ability
• Potential struggles may be depression, anxiety, and fear.
• Getting lost in their own mind may even be one of their struggles.

After looking at all the ideas I am capable of generating, I mix up about 3 of them in one sentence to make myself sound intelligent and show some interpretation of the quote I am using.

You try with your second quote.

To paraphrase or explain the first quote in your question, you basically just need to interpret the metaphor and put it in your own words. 

You could write something like this:

• Lack of interaction with others, leads to more lack of interaction with others, which then leads to:  problems of not knowing how to interact with others, having negative attitudes toward others, and having additional problems common for the elderly. 

or

• Not interacting with others leads to one not being able to interact with others, which leads to negative attitudes toward others as well as other problems.

The second quote simply means that it is better to pick activities that the elderly can do and are interested in doing, than to not have any activities for them at all.