94 Maturity Quotes

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.

I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.

I can't be as confident about computer science as I can about biology. Biology easily has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. It's at that level.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing.

We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

In the progress of personality, first comes a declaration of independence, then a recognition of interdependence.

In fact, at this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the 'edge of history.' There would be a real New Age.

We're not too young for love, just too young for about everything there is that goes with love.

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for - if you are honest - you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'

Man matures through work. Which inspires him to difficult good.

One does not fall 'in' or 'out' of love. One grows in love.

A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.

'He who matures early lives in anticipation.'

Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander; they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature. (132)

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star.

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation. There is no candour in a story of early manhood which leaves out of account the home-sickness for nursery morality, the regrets and resolutions of amendment, the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable regularity.'

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth, but some views are more true than others, more evolved, more developed, more adequate. And so let's get that part out of the way right now: homophobia in any form, as far as I can tell, stems from a lower level of human development - but it is a level, it exists, and one has to make room in one's awareness for those lower levels as well, just as one has to include third grade in any school curriculum. Just don't, you know, put those people in charge of anything important.

I'm very mature for my age, but I'm also innocent in a lot of ways. I'm complicated.

Giving up at something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn't giving up at all, it's growing up.

In any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. But in an age of anxiety, an age of her morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on his own at an earlier age and for a longer period.

One cannot really be Catholic & grown-up.

That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,-both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

The Rock could just imagine what you were like in High School! The oldest 27 year old senior the world has ever seen! Standing outside your house with your momma, and that short little yellow bus pulling up in front - beep beep, beep beep, beep beep! You just walk in on the bus, go into class, get inside the classroom, teacher up on the blackboard 'Ok class, what is 2 + 2? Do you know Booker?' 'Oh yeah I know the answer to that, 2 + 2? Thomas Jefferson, sucka!'

That's right, hide from me, that's mature of you. Don't face up to anything. Isn't that what your life in this house is all about? Hiding!

What I am seeing right now is a man who is so dominated by his mother that he is willing to throw away his marriage in order to protect her from the trauma of growing up and acting like an adult. So please do keep on shielding her from any chance of ever becoming a mature, productive, empathic human being... I knew that was a facet of your life when I married you. But don't you dare to accuse me of being envious of the sickness that you call motherlove.

He saw that he was young, but he did not hold it against himself. He also saw that he was happy, but he did not wish that he still felt that way. He remembered too well the pain of discovering how foolish he had been. He saw himself more as father had seen him, as a boy on a path of years, echoing childhood with every move, promising manhood also.

The blame for Armageddon lies on man. And the millennium will come only when the average man exhibits a scientific integrity about all he is and does--instead of half of it. Many a psychological Archimedes has put signposts on the hard road man must follow if he is to avoid self-destruction and come into his own. A few very great modern scientists have added to the lore. Indications of what man may expect of himself are everywhere at hand. But most men must first be persuaded that the task lies ahead and not behind--that we are infants still, with loaded guns for toys.

I have always said this of Tony: he immatures with age.

Oh, Theo, why should I change - I used to be very passive and very gentle and quiet - I'm that no longer, but then I'm no longer a child either now - sometimes I feel my own man.

I'm not a baby, I'm a MAN, I am an ANCHORMAN.

What are you telling me, that you're, you're, you're gonna leave Emily, is this true? And, and run away with the, the, the winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald emotional maturity award?

I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity.

He had life figured out really young. He knew life wasn't always fair.

The hills of manhood wear a noble face When seen from far; The mist of light from which they take their grace Hides what they are.

'And Clay, I want to say something to you. I think you are one of the few people I've met throughout this competition who can take criticism like a grown up. Learn, You definitely got better, You've lost some of this facial thing which I think was distracting, and You just did a really grown up, fantastic performance. Congratulation.' - Simon Cowell on 'Solitaire' -

Man cannot live without self-control

You silent boy, you have found such eloquence now that you can't be a mere boy anymore

How I wish you could have kept on living a life of joy. But no one can. Language comes to us, and with it lies and threats, cruelty and disappointment. You walk, and those steps lead you outside the shelter of your home. To keep the joy of childhood you would have to die as a child, or live as one, never becoming a man, never growing. So I can grieve for the lost child, and yet not regret the good man braced with pain and riven with guilt, who yet was kind to me and many others, and whom I loved, and whom I also almost knew. Almost, almost knew

Nafi knew the rule: when a man acts like a child, he's boyish, and everyone's delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he's childish, and everyone tells him to be a man

Just because you know I had no other choice doesn't make the anger go away. I understand that. But you're a man now. You can put away these childish things

Lerne Widerspruch ertragen. Sei nicht kindisch eingenommen von deinen Meinungen.

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Dans les premieres passions les femmes aiment l'amant, et dans les autres elles aiment l'amour.

He who lives as children live - who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance - remains childlike.

He does his stuff really well, he's got a real good screen presence and a lot of talent. He's more mature than I was at that age. He seems more worldly, seems to know his way around.

Once every 50 years a guy like that comes along. For his age, Heath has an incredible manliness about him. I think he has a strong sense of himself, but it's especially amazing in someone so young, because usually male stars don't develop that kind of thing until their thirties.

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!

The guardians who have kindly undertaken the supervision will see to it that by far the largest part of mankind, including the entire 'beautiful sex,' should consider the step into maturity, not only as difficult but as very dangerous. After having made their domestic animals dumb and having carefully prevented these quiet creatures from daring to take any step beyond the lead-strings to which they have fastened them, these guardians then show them the danger which threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.

Age does not make us childish, as they say. It only finds us true children still.

I'm not sure I'm an adult yet.

'She is one of the most intelligent singers I've worked with for a very long time, - there are little reminders in her voice, of all sorts of other singers like Eartha Kitt and Edith Piaf, - of whom she has never heard. She exudes a modest confidence, she is completely sure of herself and has a maturity far in advance of her age.'

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.

A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of having experienced at least that number of very hard winters.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

This is the sort of little-boy, stamp your foot stuff which comes from a financial yuppie when you shoe him into parliament.

I started to shed the monstrous aesthetic affectation of my youth so as to make room for the monstrous philistine postures of middle age, but it was some years before I was bold enough to decline an invitation to 'Hamlet' on the grounds that I knew who won.

The whole principle is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.

There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk 'his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor' on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else.

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

Has it ever occurred to you...that parents are nothing but overgrown kids until their children drag them into adulthood? Usually kicking and screaming?

If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

Alice had managed to get herself back under some sort of control, but it was thin. Thin enough to read a newspaper through, his bingo-playing mother might have said. Although a kid herself, Alice had managed to keep herself shiny-side up mostly for the other kid's sake, so he wouldn't give way entirely.

We tested a lot of people and when Heath came along, he had the same manly qualities Mel Gibson had as a young man. They're never really boys; they already have it