quotes, quotations and passages on growingup

You grow up the day you have
your first real laugh at yourself.

Ethel Barrymore

When you're growing up your mother says, "Wear rubbers* or you'll catch cold." When you become an adult you discover that you have the right not to wear rubbers and to see if you catch cold or not. It's something like that. Diane Arbus *A type of waterproof boot worn when it's raining.

Growing up is never easy to do. Some days you feel happy and carefree, and others you feel sad. Some days you feel confident and self-assured, and other days you feel unsure. Life can seem upside down, because you're changing so quickly, but your life is made up of what you believe about yourself. Believe in your ability to succeed, and you will. Believe in your ability to meet every difficult challenge, and you will. Believe in your ability to give and receive love, and you will. Believe in yourself. You are a wonderful, unique person who is beginning to find out what the world is about and searching your place in it. Have patience with yourself and love yourself. Growing up isn't easy, but you'll make it. Donna Levine

Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up. Peter Drucker

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

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain artists once they grow up.

Pablo Picasso

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It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

e.e. cummings

Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world--
too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember
what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat
children as inferiors. Well I won't do that.

Walt Disney

A grownup is a child with layers on.

Woody Harrelson

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.

John Maxwell

You can understand and relate to most people if you look at them--
no matter how old or impressive they may be--as if they are children.
For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much--we
simply grow taller. Oh, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and
wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume
is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose
daily life is still best described by fairy tales.

Leo Rosten

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

Joseph Heller

Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which
are too small, your vision which is muddled?
You are the one who must grow up.

Dag Hammarskjold

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

Richard Bach

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

Margaret Mead

When we were children, we used to think that when we were
grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is
to accept vulnerability. . . . To be alive is to be vulnerable.

Madeleine L'Engle

Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about.
The trick is to grow up without getting old.

Frank Lloyd Wright

If you haven't grown up by age forty, you don't have to.

unattributed

youth

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

unattributed

Part of me is still waiting to grow up, to be an adult,
and the other part knows there is no such thing.

Richard Dreyfuss

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

Tom Robbins

When children learn that giving is more rewarding than taking; when they learn that they can't control everything, but they are masters of their own souls; when they learn to accept people whose difference they fear, and that pleasure is found in the power in helping others; when they learn that the value of one's life is best measured not by possession acquired, but by wisdom shared, hope inspired, tears wiped, and hearts touched; when they learn that happiness and lasting contentment are not to be found in what a person has, but in what he or she is; when they learn to withhold judgment of people, knowing that everyone is blessed with good and bad qualities; when they learn that every person has been given the gift of a unique self and the purpose of life is to share the very best of that gift with the world. . . . When children learn these ideals, they will no longer be children--they will be blessings to those who know them, and worthy models for all the world's children.

David L. Weatherford

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All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up.
Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to
grow up--that growing is an ever ongoing process.

M. Scott Peck

If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about
what life should be, then maturity is letting go again.

Mary Beth Danielson

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

C.S. Lewis

Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.

Maya Angelou

If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!

J.M. Barrie

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Patrick Rothfuss
The Name of the Wind

Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.

Virginia Woolf

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming
an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

Jodi Picoult
My Sister's Keeper

In a desperate attempt to stay young forever we have
achieved eternal childishness, rather than eternal youth.

Daniel Prokop
Leaving Neverland

youth

As children, we are not jaded by the sophistication of the world.
We're real. We're humble. We're willing to admit our needs and
trust that others can help us. We're unpretentious and adventurous.
We're lighthearted and imaginative. And we're fearless, willing to
take a risk--a juvenile version of what the early twentieth-century
Bible teacher Oswald Chambers calls "reckless joy."
And then, of course, we grow up. And what happens? In many
cases, we get jaded by the world. Instead of being real, we rationalize
behaviors. We learn to put our personal spin on our shortcomings
rather than deal with them. We become pretentious. We throw
ourselves into all sorts of physical adventure but are cowardly
regarding relationships, flitting from one person
to the next, lacking the courage to commit.

Bob Welch
52 Little Lessons from It's a Wonderful Life

Young children are such exuberant, joy-filled creatures, eager to embrace
life in all its mystery and majesty. Everything is new and exciting; everything--
a bubble, a snowflake, a mud puddle--is a gift. But something in the process
of growing up so often takes the juice out of us. We become encrusted, hard,
jaded. We lose our joy, our exuberance, our passionate embrace of life.
We trudge instead of skip, retreat instead of explore,
"too old for that," whatever "that" is.

M.J. Ryan
Attitudes of Gratitude