Quotes About Growth

It took my year in England to make me realize how much I had been simply treading water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in and seeking out life.

These comings and goings, this grace and godlessness, have become such a part of my life that the wild colors and sounds now have become less strange and less strong; and the blacks and greys that inevitably follow are, likewise, less dark and frightening...But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.

379Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.

Time finally did bring relief. But it took its own, and not terribly sweet, time in doing so.

There was a fine-tuning of Richard's and my temperaments during the years we lived with his heart disease, lymphoma, and lung cancer. Before, our differences had triggered sporadic tension; now our basic natures served us better. Our sensibilities and quirks evolved into something more shared and complex, more mingled.

On the one hand, it was exhilarating to be around so many smart and competitive students; on the other hand, it was new, humiliating, and very discouraging. It was not easy to have to acknowledge my very real limitations in background and ability.

Failure: the renewable resource.

took me a long time to learn that mistakes aren't good or bad, they're just mistakes, and you clean them up and go on.

When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.

There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one's life

She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone.

Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.

When we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.

How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly?

The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.

The colonel nodded. Our childhood seems so far away now. All this - he gestured out of the vehicle - so much suffering. One of our Japanese poets, a court lady many years ago, wrote how sad this was. She wrote of how our childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grown. Well, Colonel, it's hardly a foreign land to me. In many ways, it's where I've continued to live all my life. It's only now I've started to make my journey from it.

It doesn't matter how old someone is, it's what they've experienced that counts. People can get to be a hundred and not experience a thing.

it would have been so stupid, Niki went on, If you would just accepted everything the way it was and just stayed where you were. At least you made an effort.

I was wondering, princess. Could it be our love would never have grown so strong down the years had the mist not robbed us the way it did? Perhaps it allowed old wounds to heal.

One should not, in any case, attempt to make a virtue out of one's limitations.

Not that anything significant started to happen immediately afterwards; but for me at least, that conversation was a turning point. I definitely started to look at everything differently. Where before I'd have backed away from awkward stuff, I began instead, more and more, to ask questions, if not out loud, at least within myself.

Josie and I really loved each other, that was the truth at the time. No one can claim you misled or tricked them. But now we're no longer kids, we have to wish each other the best and go our different ways. It couldn't have worked out, me going to college, trying to compete with all those lifted kids. I've got my own plans now, and that's how it should be. But that was no lie, Klara. And in a funny way, it still isn't a lie now.

You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grow up at a certain point in the process.

In any case, there is surely no great shame in mistakes made in the best of faith. It is surely a thing far more shameful go be unable or unwilling to acknowledge them.