Quotes About Growth

How short lived knowledge is. When I was 20 I knew it all: now at 70 I can't understand a thing

Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. He is wrong; man is a thinking erratum. Each period in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one and that in turn will be corrected by the next, until publication of the definitive edition, which the publisher donates to the worms.

Forgiveness is not to give the other person peace. Forgiveness is for you. Take that opportunity.

I didn't mean that I'm a nonpareil now. But I'm different, yes. I've found out that I can do quite difficult things if I keep trying very hard, and at least I've discovered that if I don't keep myself occupied I'm unhappy and unpleasant.

Robert Frost: "Now when I am old my teachers are the young.

Instead, we prepare for the next jump, then the one after, until after a lifetime of motion is past, we are startled, at least a little, by where we are and by what we have become.

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

You have to let it all hang out, let go of the ideas that were more comfortable and embrace some of the sadness in your life.

I like to think of home as a verb, something we keep recreating.

I assumed," Ai-ming told me, "that when Big Mother's stories finished, life would continue and I would go back to being myself. But it wasn't true. The stories got longer and longer, and I got smaller and smaller. When I told my grandmother this, she laughed her head off. She said, 'But that's how the world is, isn't it? Or did you think you were bigger than the world?

What mattered was the here and now and not the life before, what mattered were the changeable things of today and tomorrow and not the ever, infinitely, unbearably unchanging yesterday. She

When she returned, she was full of life, impassioned. She seemed to want change, within herself, between them, and she believed all things were possible. She said that the past was not static, our memories fold and bend, we change with every step taken into the future.

I assumed that when the story finished, life would continue and I would go back to being myself. But it wasn't true. The stories got longer and longer, and I got smaller and smaller. When I told Big Mother this, she laughed her head off. "But that's how the world is, isn't it?

I should remember that I be just as worthy now as I will be when this is done.

one of the joys of marriage is that one can be bad again.

A garden did not need people in order to be alive and natural. The flowers might have died, and the last leaves might be falling, but the space was still redolent with the odors of life. It contained a thousand reassurances that no matter what one person's strife, the seasons continued their cycle.

Those who see errors as opportunities to learn and try again are the people who will most quickly find new solutions. (This is how our children become resilient.) Those who freeze and panic when they make mistakes will find it much harder to adapt.

Parents who have more than one child are very aware that, while we certainly have an impact on our child's development, it has as much to do with them as with us. "I can't believe how different my kids are" should inform us that child development is an uneven process only partly tied to parenting (and no one knows exactly how much that "partly" is).

the development of a sense of self.

The best way we can help our children welcome challenges is to encourage them to work just outside their comfort zone, stand by to lend a hand when needed, and model enthusiasm for challenging tasks.