Quotes About Growth

Dear friend, all theory is gray,And green the golden tree of life.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.

Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

By seeking and blundering we learn.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.

We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.

If you would create something, you must be something.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who moves not forward, goes backward.

Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

I see my discourse leaves you cold; Dear kids, I do not take offense; Recall: the Devil, he is old, Grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense!

The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.

The best is the deep quiet in which I live and grow against the world, and harvest what they cannot take from me by fire or sword.

Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt

Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth.

Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.

There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.