Best 720 quotes in «maturity quotes» category

I finally decided what I want to be when I grow up - late.

If you erased your past mistakes, you could purge your regrets with them, but you’d also wipe any lessons learned and any subsequent maturity gained. Don’t regret the minefields you stepped into, just try and learn not to step into the same one twice.

I had a dream that boys would act like men for once…then I woke up.

If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.

If you are to be, you must begin by assuming responsibility.

If you happen to be white in a white country; pretty according to the dictates of fashion; rich in a country where money is adored, it’s almost impossible to grow up and to grow up honest inside. It is almost impossible. Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging. But to grow up, to take responsibility for the time you take up, and the space you occupy, to honor every living person for his or her humanity, that is to grow up.

If you're claiming to be the Supreme Being (even if you're not doing a very good job at it), I wish you were a bit more mentally mature.

... I guessed that when you are nearly a man, you have to learn to put up with a lot of aggravation from little old bitty kids.

I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is any thing but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact, there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was led to conclusions in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind. An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death—is, that, finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than any thing else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.

...I have decided that I shan't sweat the small stuff. Sense and sensibility will, I assume, come in their own time. If indeed they ought to come. And in the meantime, I shall continue to work my ass off... and whenever the opportunity arises... dance my ass off. ... As someone very smart once wrote, 'Those who were seen dancing were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music'.

I like my whiskey neat and strong just as I like my women. Women who have matured in their minds and bodies; women who have faced the storms of life! Because my life has always been about the thrill with the raging storms!

I have always loved fairy tales, even now at the age when I am supposed to be too grown up and cynical for them.

I have found that as your wisdom and maturity develop, the number of other people you blame for your own circumstances shrinks.

I have leveled with the girls - from Anchorage to Amarillo. I tell them that all marriages are happy It's the living together afterward that's tough. I tell them that a good marriage is not a gift, It's an achievement. that marriage is not for kids It takes guts and maturity. It separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. I tell them that marriage is tested dily by the ability to compromise. Its survival can depend on being smart enough to know what's worth fighting about. Or making an issue of or even mentioning. Marriage is giving - and more important, it's forgiving. And it is almost always the wife who must do these things. Then, as if that were not enough, she must be willing to forget what she forgave. Often that is the hardest part. Oh, I have leveled all right. If they don't get my message, Buster, It's because they don't want to get it. Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals Because nobody wants to red the small print in dreams.

I have lived my life backwards as compared to my peers. Everyone did incredibly stupid things as teenagers and pre-teens. I didn't. I was the one telling everybody that they were incredibly stupid. Now that they are all past that stage and we are all much older— I am the one doing incredibly stupid things. I have figured that I've earned that right, by now! You have to earn the right to be stupid.

I have sensed the change and maturity leading me to the path of evolution. I observed the veins during suffering and pleasure. It's here inside me. I am me. I am me. ​

I introduced Nora as my wife, though that was a lie. Old people, that's what they wanted to hear. If you were married, you were mature, reliable, exactly like them, because in their day men and women didn't just live together--they made a commitment, they had children and went on cruises and built big houses on lakes and filled them with all the precious trinkets and manufactured artifacts they'd collected along the way.

In adolescence you can never deny the child that you once were; in youth you can never reject the child you were; nor what you are. In other words, we learned that the right thing is to grow and gain maturity. What they have not taught is that maturity means that we should never grow up. Happy are those who remember the humility of the child who is still alive in their hearts. The only true maturity is the rebirth of the child; or do you think that as an adult you would enter the kingdom of heaven?

I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days.

In a desperate attempt to stay young forever we have achieved eternal childishness, rather than eternal youth.

Individuation is an attainment of spiritual maturity frighteningly seldom attained in today's mono-cultures.

In a matter of weeks, he had learned that without suffering and doubt, there can be no whole human being.

I never expected you to understand, but I did expect you to be there.

Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled.

Information can be harmful when you're not ready for it. ['The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes']

In never-ending efforts to defeat incumbent officeholders in hard times, the public is perpetuating the source of its discontent, electing a new group of people who are even less inclined to or capable of crafting compromise or solutions to pressing problems.

In our process of spiritual maturity, our faith needs to attain bigger dimensions

In other words, the proof of spiritual maturity is not how 'pure' you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.

I respect traditional people - they have the eyes which see value in the tarnished. This is a gift in itself. Tradition requires a wealth of discipline in order to be adhered to, hence it is rarely found in youth.

Is it not a sign of immaturity to wish for someone's downfall? To wish that he or she fails at whatever productive endeavours they are aiming at? Wishing to be the only one succeeding, while everyone else fails? It's a world where we are all dependent on one another, one way or the other; and trade is happening at a much more sophisticated level than ever before. It is to our collective benefit for people to succeed.

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;

Is it possible that that's all maturity is? Speaking better? Is it possible that everybody in the world, is just a dumb, stupid kid acting like a grown-up because they can sound like one and look like one? It almost seems easy.

It didn't matter what anyone else saw in me. For the first time, I felt like I was seeing myself.

I'm all groan up in America.

I think I may have to grow up without growing old. I think we're going to have to define differently what I'm going to be. We're going to have to define my growing up differently.

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own. You may not appreciate them at first. You may pine for your novel of crude and unadulterated adventure. You may, and will, give it the preference when you can. But the dull days come, and the rainy days come, and always you are driven to fill up the chinks of your reading with the worthy books which wait so patiently for your notice. And then suddenly, on a day which marks an epoch in your life, you understand the difference. You see, like a flash, how the one stands for nothing, and the other for literature. From that day onwards you may return to your crudities, but at least you do so with some standard of comparison in your mind. You can never be the same as you were before. Then gradually the good thing becomes more dear to you; it builds itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past.

I think about the pepper plant, the corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and more plants. And I've noticed that while those seeds are living within the fruit or vegetable they can not grow. It is only when those seeds have died, that they can be planted and grow. And, I can relate this same process to the human body. In order to grow and thrive in the spirit, you must die to the flesh. Meaning, You have to rid your mind and body of toxic negative worldly things in order to grow and develop more spiritually.

It is not the time that a person has lived that determines maturity, but what he does during that time.

It is only when we are far enough along to realise the sorry state that most people are in that we lose our concern with what other people think.

It is us who change. We grow stronger, and the problems appear less imposing.

I tried desperately to put my thoughts into the forms of prayers, but I didn't know how. If God was real, I figured He was powerful enough to know what I wanted without me actually saying the right words.

It has been my experience that facetiousness in the mouth of someone old enough to know better is often no more than camouflage for something far, far worse.

It is a sign of intellectual maturity to always crawl to conclusions.

It is childish to eat primarily or only to please your tongue.

... It is immensely moving when a mature man - no matter whether old or young in years - is aware of a responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other'. That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man - a man who can have the 'calling for politics'.

It is impossible to become the best version of yourself if you do not read, exercise, and meditate.

It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ – and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing – oh, that eternal hand! – a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.

It is necessary to grow up in maturity, firmness and courage in order to reach the goal

It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE – IS – HARD.

It's funny: one starts off thinking one is shrinkingly sensitive & intelligent & always one down & all the rest of it: then at thirty one finds one is a great clumping brute, incapable of appreciating anything finer than a kiss or a kick, roaring our one's hypocrisies at the top of one's voice, thick skinned as a rhino. At least I do.