91 Quotes Tagged: maturity

Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.

Older people make this mistake all the time with younger people, treating them as a finished product when in fact they are in process.

We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more; he overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. ... I know we who are young beginners in grace think ourselves qualified to reform the whole Christian church. We drag her before us, and condemn her straightway; but when our virtues become more mature, I trust we shall not be more tolerant of evil, but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms.

Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled.

A man is born; his first years go by in obscurity amid the pleasures or hardships of childhood. He grows up; then comes the beginning of manhood; finally society's gates open to welcome him; he comes into contact with his fellows. For the first time he is scrutinized and the seeds of the vices and virtues of his maturity are thought to be observed forming in him.

This is, if I am not mistaken, a singular error.

Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first word which arouse with him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of the prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life.

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.

I will come back to you, I swear I will;
And you will know me still.
I shall be only a little taller
Than when I went.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?

Maturity' really means: being very unsurprised by, and calm around, pain and disappointment.

A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.

Not to grow up properly is to retain our 'caterpillar' quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child's brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science.

I have leveled with the girls - from Anchorage to Amarillo.
I tell them that all marriages are happy
It's the living together afterward that's tough.
I tell them that a good marriage is not a gift,
It's an achievement.
that marriage is not for kids It takes guts and maturity.
It separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls.
I tell them that marriage is tested dily by the ability to compromise.
Its survival can depend on being smart enough to know what's worth fighting about.
Or making an issue of or even mentioning.
Marriage is giving - and more important, it's forgiving.
And it is almost always the wife who must do these things.
Then, as if that were not enough, she must be willing to forget what she forgave.
Often that is the hardest part.
Oh, I have leveled all right.
If they don't get my message, Buster,
It's because they don't want to get it.
Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals
Because nobody wants to red the small print in dreams.