Quotes about Maturity

But the adult is not the highest stage of development. The end of the cycle is that of the independent, clear-minded, all-seeing Child. That is the level known as wisdom. When the Tao te Ching and other wise books say things like, "Return to the beginning; become a child again" that's what they are referring to. Why do the enlightened seem filled with light and happiness like children? Why do they sometimes even look and talk like children? Because they are. The wise are Children Who Know. Their minds have been emptied of the countless minute somethings of small learning and filled with the great wisdom of the Great Nothing, the Way of the Universe.

It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it.

In the modern technoindustrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without even knowing manhood.

Morality is cast in stone, while ethics are cast in daily life.

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Worry is running a horror movie about the future - without a stop button.

One of the things about being a grown-up is learning how to act right even when you feel wrong.

One of the things about being a grown-up is learning how to act right even when you feel wrong.

A man's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.

'To look behind or to look upfront is not as important as to look inside'

As we get older, the future gets shorter and the past gets longer, but the present deepens.

to exist is to change,
to change is to mature,
to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

When I was young I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.

No mirror ever became iron again;
No bread ever became wheat;
No ripened grape ever became sour fruit.
Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse.
Become the light.

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'

To exist is to change; to change is to mature; to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy.

In positive terms, we can state that psychological maturity entails finding greater satisfaction in giving than in receiving; having a capacity to form satisfying and permanent loyalties; being primarily a creative, contributing person; having learned to profit from experience; having a freedom from fear (anxiety) with a resulting true serenity and not a pseudo absence of tension; and accepting and making the most of unchangeable reality when it confronts one.

To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

One sign of maturity is the ability to be comfortable with people who are not like us.

Radio wasn't outside our lives. It coincided with and helped to shape our childhood and adolescence. As we slogged toward maturity, it also grew up and turned into television, leaving behind, like dead skin, transistorized talk-radio and nonstop music. . . .

They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold, we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children - though their children were, in fact happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched

March 20th. Marks the 1st day of true spring. The Goddess blankets the Earth with fertility, bursting forth from Her sleep, as the God stretches and grows to maturity. He walks the greening fields and delights in the abundance of Nature. This is a time of beginnings, of action, of planting spells for future gains, and of tending ritual gardens.