Quotes About Growth

Truth grows gradually in us, like a musician who plays a piece again and again until suddenly he hears it for the first time

But courage was growing in me too. Little by little it was getting harder and harder for me not to speak out.

Before, the woods had always done so much for me. Once I could actually go out into the woods and communicate with God, or Nature or something. Now that something didn't come through. It was just not there anymore. More than ever I began to wonder whether God actually existed. Maybe God changed as the individual changed, or perhaps grew as one grew.

Marriage should, I think, always be a little hard and new and strange. It should be breaking your shell and going into another world, and a bigger one.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

When you love someone you do not love them, all the time, in the exact same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships.

The four signs of aging "Courage, Strength, Wisdom & I don't remember...

I bought the sweetness with this pain.

The world changes, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words.

I think that sometimes the great changes in our lives, the ones that divide time, happen so deep down and silently that we don't even know when they occur......It frequently happens that the seasons of the greatest change are the times that feel the most tranquil, the most suspended, the most...timeless.

You wouldn't maintain a house like that' you'd feet it and water it. You'd have to give it nourishment and love it to keep it alive and healthy.

Forsythia that I thought had been dozed into oblivion sprang up and misted the foundations with lemon icing I yearn for all winter.

But one consequence of learning anything new is that one usually learns more than anticipated.

Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman

Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.

Sun, you hammer of yellow,  you hat on fire,  you honeysuckle mama,  pour your blonde on me!  Let me laugh for an entire hour  at your supreme being, your Cadillac stuff,  because I've come a long way  from Brussels sprouts. 

I grew, and then there were many strange apparitions, the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison and all of that.

The great theme we all share is that of becoming ourselves, of overcoming our father and mother, of assuming our identities somehow.

Today, my small child, Joyce, love your self's self where it lives.

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.