maturity Quotes

“I’m not a bit changed--not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me--back here--is just the same.”

“I’ve always been very confident in my immaturity.”

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

“Tristran Thorn, at the age of seventeen, and only six months older than Victoria, was halfway between a boy and a man, and was equally uncomfortable in either role; he seemed to be composed chiefly of elbows and Adam’s apples.”

“As a man matures he also learns that he may be giving up himself, but his major change is becoming more aware of how he can succeed in giving. Likewise, as a woman matures she also learns new strategies for giving, but her major change tends to be learning to set limits in order to receive what she wants.”

“I’ve been talking to you for a long time, but today was the first time you could hear it, and all those other times weren’t a waste either. Like little cracks in the wall, one at a time but woven together, they prepared you for today. You have to prepare the soil if you want it to embrace the seed.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he told himself. “You’re too old for monsters.”

“The eyes of a woman in the face of a ten-year-old girl.”

“In that sheltered, gentle life that seemed far away, the girl would have believed her mother. She used to believe everything her mother said. But in this harsh new world, the girl felt she had grown up. She felt older than her mother. She knew the other women were saying the truth. She knew the rumors were true. She did not know how to explain this to her mother. Her mother had become like a child.”

“We in this generation, must come to terms with nature, and I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”

“I like men of your age . . . young boys are so idiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at college, and how much money they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how to appreciate women.”

“When his grandfather’s initial antagonism wore off, Benjamin and that gentleman took enormous pleasure in one another’s company. They would sit for hours, these two, so far apart in age and experience, and, like old cronies, discuss with tireless monotony the slow events of the day. Benjamin felt more at ease in his grandfather’s presence than in his parents’ – they seemed always somewhat in awe of him and, despite the dictatorial authority they exercised over him, frequently addressed him as ‘Mr.‘”

“Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom.”

“tell them im strong tell them im a man good by mr wigin.”

“Cause I’m go’n die soon? That make me a man, Mr. Wiggins?”

“Age is just a number, not a state of mind or a reason for any type of particular behaviour.”

“What’s so good about being 20? I call them the materialistic years. The years we get distracted by all the bullshit. Then we cope on when we hit our 30s and spend those years trying to make up for the 20s. But your 40s? Those years are for enjoying it.”

“People create little ideas about ages so they can write silly self-help books, stick stupid comments in birthday cards, create names for Internet chat rooms, and look for excuses for crises that are happening in their life. For example the man’s so called ‘midlife crisis’ is just a bunch of hype. Age is not the problem; it’s the male brain that’s the problem. Men have been cheating since they were apes (insert your own joke there), since cavemen times (and again there) all the way up to now, the age of what is supposed to be the civilized man. That’s the way they were made. Age is not the issue.”

“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”

″ You’ll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won’t matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ”

“I think that’s one of the biggest signs a person has matured—knowing how to appreciate things that matter to others, even if they don’t matter very much to you.”

“From here on out, there’s just reality. I think that’s what maturity is: a stoic response to endless reality. But then, what do I know?”

“Things are never what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.”

“New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration.”

As a young man he had sown his wild oats, of course; he had boasted of his free-thinking and denied the existence of God to his companions in public-houses. But that was all passed and done with ... nearly. He still bought a copy of Reynolds’s Newspaper every week but he attended to his religious duties and for nine-tenths of the year lived a regular life.

He was not so old—thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just at the point of maturity.

“I remember a time when this hand was white and smooth, and your first care was to keep it so. It was very pretty then, but to me it is much prettier now, for in this seeming blemishes I read a little history.”

“I rather miss my wild girl, but if I get a strong, helpful, tenderhearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied.”

“I have always put you on your guard against new acquaintances. Now you are a man, and are able to give me advice; yet I repeat to you, Albert, be prudent.”