Quotes About Growth

There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.

One cannot change, that is to say become a different person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one has ceased to be.

There is no man...however wise, who has not at some period in his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man...

We don't receive wisdom we must discover it for ourselves.

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

As a rule it is with our being reduced to a minimum that we live; most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services. But on this morning of travel, the interruption of the routine of my existence, the unfamiliar place and time, had made their presence indispensable.

Once he has outgrown his youth, a man will rarely remain a prisoner to his insolence. He had thought it was the only way to behave; then he suddenly discovers that, even for a prince, there are such things as music, literature, not to speak of standing for the post of deputy.

The truth is that as we grow older we kill all those who love us by the cares we give them, by the anxious tenderness we inspire in them and constantly arouse.

Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it isn't you who want me to be unhappy, to force me to leave you. You, you've never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And, drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would set off for the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.

After a certain age, and even if we develop in quite different ways, the more we become ourselves, the more our family traits are accentuated.

The whole art of living is to use the people who make us suffer simply as steps enabling us to obtain access to their divine form and thus joyfully to people our lives with divinities.

That girl whom I never saw save dappled with the shadows of their leaves, was to me herself a plant of local growth, only taller than the rest, and one whose structure would enable me to approach more closely than in them to the intimate savour of the land from which she had sprung.

Like a fruit hidden among its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's confinement.

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us

Like a swimmer who throws himself into the water in order to learn, but chooses a moment when there are not too many people to see him.

As though on a seedling whose blossoms ripen at different times, I had seen in old ladies, on that beach at Balbec, the dried-up seeds and sagging tubers that my girl-friends would become. But, now that it was time for buds to blossom, what did that matter?

When he spoke, his words came with a confusion which was delightful to hear because one felt that it indicated not so much a defect in his speech as a quality of his soul, as it were a survival from the age of innocence which he had never wholly outgrown.

It is strange how a first love, by the lesions it leaves on our heart, may open the way for later loves, but yet fail to offer us, in the identical character of our symptoms and sufferings, the means of curing them.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

For a man cannot change, that is to say become another person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the self which he has ceased to be.

In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but youth was the only time in which we learned anything

Be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the gentle gardeners who make our souls blossom.

in later years, one can grow so well accustomed as to smile at them, to take the tormentor's side with a. happy determination which deludes one into the belief that it is not, really, tormenting; but

And on their naked limbs the flowry roof/Show'r'd Rose, which the Morn repair'd.