Quotes About Growth

Books gave us a way to shape ourselves—to form our thoughts and to signal to each other who we were and who we wanted to be.

Being absolutely sure that one is right is part of growing up, and so is realizing, years later, that the truth might be more nuanced.

meliorism"—the conviction that, through the small, beneficent actions and intentions of individuals, the world might gradually grow to be a better place.

A book may not tell us exactly how to live our own lives, but our own lives can teach us how to read a book.

The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius.

Sometimes you have to destroy the past so that you'll learn how to live in the new world.

In the words of the Joni Mitchell song, we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Real food, Pollan points out, is not fast. Like all good things, it takes time: one way or another, it grows, and the closer we are to that process, the healthier and happier we're likely to be.

It's just hard that moving on sometimes means leaving people behind.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who 'knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

But fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already a loss.

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean.

Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top.

I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind?" -Sherm

We have lunch at ten-forty-five," Colin said. A stupidly early lunch. At our school, the older you get, the stupider your lunch period.

life is like a trip. A very long one. And what matters most is the people you travel with.

How did you get to be ten years old?" "One day at a time.

You are allowed to make mistakes. And to be forgiven.

When you were small, you would swing yourself up legs-first, but now you have to stick your head through the opening in the floor and then hoist the rest. You certainly have grown, you tell yourself.

If you think about it, Bea, life is like a trip. A very long one. And what matters most is the people you travel with.

Miriam says don't lie down inside a bad feeling if you can help it" - Bea

If you think about it, Bea, life is like a trip. A very long one. And what matters most is the people you travel with" -Jesse