1,789 Growth Quotes

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.

Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall, - So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move.

It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.

What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then.

Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.

I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things go differently from the expected, it is necessary to take heart again and new courage. For the great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed. What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.

When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again; The plants suck in the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh and fair.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.

There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.

Grow into your ideals so that life cannot rob you of them.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.

Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years.

The striving for significance, this sense of yearning, always points out to us that all psychological phenomena contain a movement that starts from a feeling of inferiority and reach upward. The theory of Individual Psychology of psychological compensation states that the stronger the feeling of inferiority, the higher the goal for personal power.

It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.

There will be certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled.

I've always believed in experiencing everything in life. When you walk out with blinders on, you cut yourself off from the angels and the fairies.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart.

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.

Our ideals, like pictures, are made from lights and shadows.

To teach is to learn twice.

The press must grow day in and day out - it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again.

When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.

The growth of one blesses all. I am commited to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively.

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness.

Global consciousness is not an objective belief that can be taught to anybody and everybody, but a subjective transformation in the interior structures that can hold belief in the first place, which itself is the product of a long line of inner consciousness development.

Gaia's main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, overpopulation, or resource depletion. Gaia's main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement in the noosphere about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot rein in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons. And we reach the worldcentric moral perspective through a difficult and laborious process of interior growth and transcendence.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

The learning process continues until the day you die.

I want to play an action hero. I'm ready for roles that totally aren't me.

My mom raised me so wonderfully. She gave me self esteem and made me appreciate my flaws, as well as my strengths.

Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.

Treat your life like something to be sculpted.

But I know what's important to me, and what isn't. And I think I know what people can get used to, and what they can even learn to like. (It just takes some people longer than others. :-)

As soon as the love relationship does not lead me to me, as soon as I in a love relationship do not lead another person to himself, this love, even if it seems to be the most secure and ecstatic attachment I have ever experienced, is not true love. For real love is dedicated to continual becoming.

A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.

You can't imagine the joy I feel when I hear that something I've said or done or written has helped others to regain their sense of dignity, to motivate them to develop their unique potential, to encourage them to reach out to others in love.

Change is the end result of all true learning.

Change. It has the power to uplift, to heal, to stimulate, surprise, open new doors, bring fresh experience and create excitement in life. Certainly it is worth the risk.

Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.

The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.

We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves.

Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development.

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.

It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.

Hinduism is a living organism. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. Knowledge is limitless and so also the application of truth. Everyday we add to our knowledge of the power of Atman (soul) and we shall keep on doing so.

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.

The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.

Say good-bye to Pat, say good-bye to Jack and say good-bye to yourself, because you're a nice guy.

As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person who can take things in stride. I'm grateful for people in my past. They helped me get to where I am, wherever that is. But now, I am thinking for myself and sitting in on all the business transactions.

My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve!

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Solitude is the place of purification.

What shelter to grow ripe is ours? What leisure to grow wise?

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

The man who realizes his ignorance has taken the first step toward knowledge.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Troubles are a blessing that force you to change, to believe.