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4c65b01 Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. aspiration assurance beauty clouds color conviction inspirational maturity sunset Rabindranath Tagore
6023ff2 I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias. growing-up life maturity Maya Angelou
f790705 I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them. maturity Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
f05e63b Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of 'not knowing. maturity uncertainty Mark Z. Danielewski
a99f444 When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. childishness maturity C.S. Lewis
02fb7e8 Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. existentialism maturity youth Hermann Hesse
08b4a84 The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up. inspirational maturity self-responsibility John C. Maxwell
7814c78 Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. imitation maturity originality plagiarism writing T.S. Eliot
d394f37 I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us. maturity melancholy suffering Hermann Hesse
adf2ae1 "Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you." immaturity love maturity need Erich Fromm
6bbacce If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? maturity pace Henry David Thoreau
68352fa "People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could." -- growing-up maturity Heather O'Neill
f94eb2c Scars fade with time. And the ones that never go away, well, they build character, maturity, caution. character maturity scars Erin McCarthy
b920509 There's truths you have to grow into. maturity H.G. Wells
6a28517 When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I do not sleep. experience life love maturity John Gardner
4e8a391 The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them. maturity St. Augustine of Hippo
0b6f41c That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old. maturity youth Philip Pullman
588cfa1 "It sounded old. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't "deserve" his family's dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn't even "deserve" to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he "deserve" Hagar's vengeance. But why shouldn't his parents tell him their personal problems? If not him, then who? And if a stranger could try to kill him, surely Hagar, who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after the flavor was gone--she had a right to try to kill him too. Apparently he though he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be...what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness." deserve family happiness maturity pain responsibility sorrow Toni Morrison
e654e4d He had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out about them as one has to find out--through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood and his own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and confused. Each thing he learned was so simple and obvious, once he grasped it, that he wondered why he had not always known it. And what had he learned? A philosopher would not think it much, perhaps, and yet in a simple human way it was a good deal. Just by living, my making the thousand little daily choices that his whole complex of heredity, environment, and conscious thought, and deep emotion had driven him to make, and by taking the consequences, he had learned that he could not eat his cake and have it, too. He had learned that in spite of his strange body, so much off scale that it had often made him think himself a creature set apart, he was still the son and brother of all men living. He had learned that he could not devour the earth, that he must know and accept his limitations. He realized that much of his torment of the years past had been self-inflicted, and an inevitable part of growing up. And, most important of all for one who had taken so long to grow up, he thought he had learned not to be the slave of his emotions. experience maturity Thomas Wolfe
3878eae Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same. growth maturity seasons Sherwood Smith
0a847ce Lately, when I didn't have room to bitch, I didn't. Maturity, at last. maturity skin-trade Laurell K. Hamilton
1b827d7 Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all. death maturity wisdom William Shakespeare
4869f8d But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place. growth maturity perspective James Baldwin
31f07d1 Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are. kurt-vonnegut maturity Kurt Vonnegut
bb24e45 Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are. friends identity maturity peers Brené Brown
e292378 Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself. eternity free-will maturity melancholy pain reconciliation the-keys-to-december time Roger Zelazny
d1ef729 But I knew it was pure masturbation, because down in my gut I wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a bright room and something solid to call my own at least until I got tired of it. There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detatched. maturity stability Hunter S. Thompson
cdc0a70 When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree. hermann-hesse maturity roots soul youth Hermann Hesse
d977f82 The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot live independently from the world, and so we must live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail. existence existentialism maturity selling-out youth Paul Murray
09f1d20 Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long. development formative-years maturity memory Kim Stanley Robinson
e178389 He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas. maturity T.H. White
17dd90e "Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That's not cynicism, that's maturity." maturity Max Brooks
b194495 I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. corruption innocence losing maturity Orson Scott Card
7e5482b Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed only to a particular man, and, then, only at his insistence. But men have no secrets, except from women, and never grow up in the way women do. It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women. This is a mystery which can terrify and immobilize a woman, and it is always the key to her deepest distress. She must watch and guide, but he must lead, and he will always appear to be giving far more of his real attention to his comrades than he is giving to her. But that noisy, outward openness of men with each other enables them to deal with the silence and secrecy of women, that silence and secrecy which contains the truth of a man, and releases it. I suppose that the root of the resentment--a resentment which hides a bottomless terror--has to do with the fact that a woman is tremendously controlled by what the man's imagination makes of her--literally, hour by hour, day by day; so she becomes a woman. But a man exists in his own imagination, and can never be at the mercy of a woman's.--Anyway, in this fucked up time and place, the whole thing becomes ridiculous when you realize that women are supposed to be more imaginative than men. This is an idea dreamed up by men, and it proves exactly the contrary. The truth is that dealing with the reality of men leaves a woman very little time, or need, for imagination. And you can get very fucked up, here, once you take seriously the notion that a man who is not afraid to trust his imagination (which is all that men have ever trusted) if effeminate. It says a lot about this country, because, of course, if all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination. Or women, for that matter: or men. capitalism imagination love maturity men women James Baldwin
ed85cb3 What was to be the value of the long looked forward to, Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders, Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit? The serenity only a deliberate hebetude, The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience. The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, For the pattern is new in every moment And every moment is a new and shocking Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm. experience knowledge maturity wisdom T.S. Eliot
5266ac4 Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary. growing-up maturity nick-adams penitentiary reform-school the-last-good-country Ernest Hemingway
9356679 With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight. experience life-lessons maturity Chris Bohjalian
005153d Not to grow up properly is to retain our 'caterpillar' quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child's brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science. childhood growing-up maturity reason Richard Dawkins
5385ef1 "The narrator analyzes that the maturing, passing away boy within him, "had issued me a challenge as he passed the baton to the man in me: He had challenged me to have the courage to become a gentle, harmless man." manhood maturity Pat Conroy
07e977a "The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged." dread existence maturity Colson Whitehead
65d2462 Growth occurs when we discover how to remain authentically ourselves in the presence of potentially threatening things. Maturity is the possession of coping skills: we can take in our stride things that previously would have knocked us off course. We are less fragile, less easily shocked and hence more capable of engaging with situations as they really are maturity Alain de Botton
c7538bb As his children, we were treated as some species of migrant workers who happened to be passing through. My father was the only person I ever knew who looked upon childhood as a dishonorable vocation one grew out of as quickly as possible. maturity parenting Pat Conroy
124c0db it's my responsibility to cultivate the man in my son. I can't be passive about that. maturity parenthood Randy Alcorn
c3387d5 It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good. maturity training Elisabeth Elliot
03922ed College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts. education humility maturity Pat Conroy
30575d6 Pete thinks we all have a blacking factory: some awful moment, early on, when we surrender our childish hearts as surely as we lose our baby teeth. childhood-suffering maturity Armistead Maupin
e3afcf1 -just on the verge of becoming a woman, and in these three years and almost five months, I'd reached maturity. I was older than the mountains outside. The wisdom of the attic was in my bones, etched on my brain, part of my flesh. bones brain flesh mature maturity mountains older teens wisdom V.C. Andrews
0048982 ...You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man -- if only you remain a little child. All the world'sgreat have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes catch a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could -- and so, it catches no fireflies.' [Merlin] coming-of-age great-man great-men maturity want-the-moon John Steinbeck
675d7a1 Dantes had entered the Chateau d'If with the round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with whom the early paths of life have been smooth. and who anticipates a future corresponding with his past. This was now all changed. The oval face was lengthened, his smiling mouth had assumed the firm and marked lines which betoken resolution; his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow furrowed with thought; his eyes were full of melancholy, and from their depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of misanthropy and hatred; his complexion, so long kept from the sun, had now that pale color which produces, when the features are encircled with black hair, the aristocratic beauty of the man of the north; the profound learning he had acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined intellectual expression; and he had also acquired, being naturally of a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame possesses which has so long concentrated all its force within itself. maturity optimism Alexandre Dumas
a4df9b6 Eventually we come to know and understand a lot of things, but it's too late, because a whole life has already been determined at a stage when we didn't know a thing. maturity Milan Kundera
daf6f7c Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish. maturity youth T.H. White
abc073a "Venerable age had not, for him, arranged that derelict landscape against which it is privileged to sit and pick its nose, break wind, and damn the course of youth groping among the obstacles erected, dutifully, by its own hands earlier, along the way of that sublime delusion known as the pursuit of happiness. Not to be confused with the state of political bigotry, mental obstinacy, financial security, sensual atrophy, emotional penury, and spiritual collapse which, under the name "maturity", animated lives around him, it might be said that Reverend Gwyon had reached maturity." humor maturity recognitions William Gaddis
b4dbfa8 "Kipster is a perfectly valid word," Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. "Okay, so what does it mean?" Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it... it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her. "Well Sarah's on drugs again and that's why she did it in Mario's backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid's been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there's a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won't go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and...." Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she'd learned it from Jud's death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days." 80-s argue baby boring bullying canada cape-breton coming-of-age drama drama-queen eating eighties fighting funny game gossip growing-up kipster maturity nostalgia nova-scotia pollution rumors scary scrabble self-harm suicide teenage words Rebecca McNutt
eee1f52 Mrs. Allan's face was not the face of the girlbride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them; and some new ones had come during the recent illness, now happily over, of her little son. But Mrs. Allan's dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever, her eyes as clear and bright and true; and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for in added tenderness and strength. maturity sadness Lucy Maud Montgomery
b4bd8d0 In our folk nobody has any experience of youth, there's barely even any time for being a toddler. The children simply don't have any time in which they might be children........Indeed... there's simply no way that we would be able to provide our children with a viable childhood, one that is real. Naturally, there are consequences. There's a certain ever present, not to be liquidated childishness that permeates our folk; We often act in ways that are totally and utterly ridiculous and, indeed, precisely like children we do things that are crazy, letting loose with our assets in a manner that is bereft of all rationality, prodigious in our celebrations, partaking in a light-headed frivolousness that is divorced from all sensibility, and often enough all simply for the sake of some small token of fun, so much do we love having our small amusements. But our folk isn't only childish, to a certain extent we also age prematurely, childhood and old age mix themselves differently with us than by others. We don't have any youth, we jump right away into maturity and, then, we remain grown-ups for too long and as a consequence to this there's a broad shadow of a certain tiredness and a sort of hopelessness that colours our essential nature, a nature that as a whole is otherwise so tenacious and permeated by hope, strong hope. This, no doubt, this is related to why we're so disinclined toward music--we're too old for music, so much excitement, so much passion doesn't sit well with our heaviness; grown-ups maturity Franz Kafka
419c4e8 She tried so hard to be brave, to be fierce as a wolverine and all, but sometimes she felt like she was just a little girl after all. childhood growing-up maturity George R.R. Martin
5bf8780 In a matter of weeks, he had learned that without suffering and doubt, there can be no whole human being. doubt humanity maturity suffering Sinclair Lewis
409547d Fair and unfair are for children fairness life-lessons maturity reality Michelle Lovric
ff691bf I was not 15 anymore, and choices no longer had that same clear, bright edge to them. maturity wisdom Geraldine Brooks
4ae2637 He sat watching what went forward with the quiet outward glance of healthy old age. maturity George Eliot
5960253 From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don't look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity. charity explanations-in-charity hidden maturity scandal sign-of-maturity sins Flannery O'Connor
0d94056 To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone. maturity possessiveness Alain de Botton
baccc2f It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33 -- but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all. growing-up maturity H.P. Lovecraft
429a41b You know your Bible too well and life too little. discretion maturity this-tournament zeal Richard Llewellyn
08d9a93 It wasn't right that you could only understand your parents' pain once you'd experienced the things they had, and by then they were gone. growing-up knowledge life-lessons maturity old-age pain parenthood parenting wisdom J. Courtney Sullivan
4a7dfa7 Joanna's quietly intent nature contrasted sharply with Holly's vibrancy. While Miss Brewster's flirtation stroked his ego, the spiritual maturity Miss Robbin's exhibited commanded his admiration and respect. crockett-archer flirty holly-brewster joanna-robbins maturity respect spirtual Karen Witemeyer
e1e2212 "Pretending",' she looked at the garden, 'is not the truth.' 'But you said two true things, right ? One, you hate this girl. Two, you want her to feel better. If you decide that the wanting truth's more important than the hating truth, just tell her you've forgiven her, even if you haven't. At least she'd feel better. Maybe that'd make you feel better too.' human-relations maturity David Mitchell
a61b497 I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady. feminism maturity old-lady rome Elizabeth Gilbert
04bd9cf Just 'cuz a kid is crying doesn't mean it's a conversation worth crying over. maturity Tite Kubo
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