Quotes About Growth

And just when you start thinking that you've accepted who you are, that changes, too. Because who you are is not permanent.

Personal growth must sometimes be measured by distance travelled rather than by current position

I envy all suffering, because suffering is necessary to become spiritually beautiful.

I am not a hero in soul and never will be, but I am better than I was.

The urge is always with me to retouch yesterday's canvas with today's paintbrush and cover the things that fill me with regret

I am not a hero in soul and never will be, but I am better than I was. Or so I tell myself; and for now, that is enough.

The cliché goes that at twenty a person has the face that God gave him, but at forty he has the face he has earned.

What an unexpected reversal of fate: only after my skin was burned away did I finally become able to feel. Only after I was born into physical repulsiveness did I come to glimpse the possibilities of the heart: I accepted this atrocious face and abominable body because they were forcing me to overcome the limitations of who I am, while my previous body allowed me to hide them. I am not a hero in soul and never will be, but I am better than I was.

While I'm not claiming that I now feel great love for all people, I can state with some confidence that I hate fewer people than I used to. This may seem like a weak claim to personal growth, but sometimes these things should be judged by distance traveled rather than by current position.

Even monkeys fall from trees.

That which nourishes me also destroys me.

That which is painful sharpens one's love.

It's our scars that make us who we are.

Ja sam više od svojih ožiljaka.

It doesn't matter how fast you move, I learned, if you never go anywhere.

I am far from perfect. You have made me all too aware of that. But for whatever it's worth, I believe I am my best self - my truest self - when I'm with you.

Between 1820 and 1830, only about a hundred novels by American writers were published in the United States; in the next decade, the number rose above three hundred, and in the 1840s, it leapt toward a thousand.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."3

Other major world religions are still centered in the same general geographic area from which they originated except for Christianity. Even more intriguing, the center of Christian growth continues to move. Why? This author suggests that Christian principles bring prosperity but then the prosperity brings a temptation to chase stability and respectability. Thus, Christian growth moves to an area where people are desperate enough to trust Christ alone.

As figure 5.1 shows, in the past the United States was not more economically stratified than other countries, but the last thirty years have seen exceptional growth in the incomes of the richest Americans.

The poor have been getting richer faster in the poor states and the rich have been getting richer faster in the rich states; see figure 5.3.

An adolescent is somebody who is in between things. A teenager is somebody who's kind of permanently there. And so living with them through the various teenage hopes and sorrows and joys was curiously enough a maturing experience for me.