Quotes About Growth

But I was beginning to intuit that full-blown maturity was not so very different from childhood. Both states in their extreme were all about following the rules.

Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously put you off the activity altogether.

The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have been gnawing since reaching the magic age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that we stuff into our children's lunch boxes.

Just because you learn something in adulthood doesn't mean it's fake.

He could see how this liberating condition could grow progressive. How in the face of an end game there was virtually no limit to what did not matter. Returned

Language is alive, and you can't put it in the freezer. But

One of the things I learned with Charles," said Gray carefully, "was that finding someone like you does not necessarily mean that either of you should be that way.

Education is not a steady process of accrual, but a touch-and-go contest between learning and forgetting, like frantically trying to fill a sink faster than it can empty through an open drain—which

the only good things about getting old was mutual permission to be imperfect.

The core dynamic of the capitalist system is the accumulation process, a process in which a portion of the profits reaped through the sale of goods and services is reinvested, swelling the capital stock, incorporating new technologies in the process, and permitting larger sales and profits in the future.

That's the risk you take if you change that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.

Elaine, I remember the first time I met you. You were so young, so scared. It nearly broke my heart to see you so.

You know you are with true friends when they lift, encourage, correct, and then spur you on.

I believe that the attacks on your life have much more to do with who you might be in the future than who you have been in the past.

Outward pressure is always an opportunity to be inwardly transformed.

Read. Read until your eyes are sore. Then read some more.

I've learned that patience is something you don't "have"; you must create it yourself. It isn't a commodity doled out to all infants in varying amounts at birth. You learn (and earn) patience by making time for it, calming yourself down, relaxing, and letting it happen. The more you practice patience, the more you have. And the more you have, the easier it is to summon when you need it most.

Death is the force that will create your new life. It is a mechanism of transformation. Welcome it.

But you'll never get a new ending if you keep starting with the same tired beginning.

Looking back on their own teenage years, most adults feel grateful that there's no easy-to-access document of all the dumb things they did.

Your daughter works hard every day to harness powerful and unpredictable emotions so that she can get on with doing everything else she means to do.

A person stops maturing at the age that they start abusing substances,

Few moments in life spark more maturation than when a young person recognizes that her parents have strengths and limitations that were in place long before she came along and that will be there long after she moves out. In letting go of the dream of turning you into the perfect parent, your daughter recovers a lot of energy that has been devoted to being angry with you, feeling hurt by you, or trying to change you.

Raising teenagers is not for the fragile, and that's true even when everything is going just as it should.