Quotes About Growth

They say: misfortunes, sufferings...well, if someone said to me right now, this minute: do you want to remain the way you were before captivity, or live through it all over again? For God's sake, captivity again and horsemeat! Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it's only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there's life, there's happiness. There's much, much still to come.

He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before.

The further one goes, the better the land seems.

When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?

Each time of life has its own kind of love.

Ma koliko nastojali ljudi, kad ih se nekoliko stotina tisu?a skupi na jednom, nevelikom mjestu, da iznakaze tu zemlju na kojoj se stiš?u; ma kako sabijali kamenje u zemlju da ne bi ništa raslo na njoj; ma kako plijevili svaku travku što probije; ma kako dimili kamenim ugljenom i petrolejem; ma kako obrezivali drve?e i ma kako istjerivali sve životinje i ptice – prolje?e je bilo prolje?e ?ak i u gradu.

I'm afraid I'm becoming ridiculous.

If a man has the will he can learn anything.

Oh, it's wonderful to be your age,' continued Anna. 'I know and remember that blue haze, like you see on the mountains in Switzerland. The haze covering everything at that blessed point when your childhood is coming to an end, and the path leading from that huge, carefree, happy circle becomes narrower and narrower, and it is both jolly and terrifying entering that enfilade, even though it is bright and beautiful...Who has not been through that?

If there is something great in you, it will not appear on your first call. It will not appear and come to you easily, without any work and effort. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.

If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself

He felt he was himself and did not want to be otherwise. He only wanted to be better than he had been before.

A man who does not understand the benefit of suffering does not live a clever and true life.

I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless, disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed, since childhood's days, for those days to come back to me!

When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, but has to understand that although he has outgrown what before used to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without any reasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidated it must be guided by it.

Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves.

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins.

In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his heart.

The ideal is within you, and the obstacle to reaching this ideal is also within you. You already possess all the material from which to create your ideal self. —THOMAS CARLYLE

Children are a torment, nothing more.

Levin felt more and more that all his thoughts about marriage, all his dreams of how he would arrange his life, were mere childishness, and that it was something he had not understood before, and now understood still less, though it was being accomplished over him; spasms were rising higher and higher in his breast, and disobedient tears were coming to his eyes.

When you carry your burden, you should know that it is good for you to have it. Make the best of this burden and take from it everything which is necessary for your intellectual life, as your stomach takes from food everything necessary for your flesh, or as fire burns brighter after you put some wood on it. —MARCUS AURELIUS

To know love, one must make mistakes and then correct them.