#adulthood

As a man begins to understand the sacrifices he must make to live the life he dreams of, he often loses his courage for such a life. ↗

— Josie Sigler

#courage #fears #growing-up #courage

That was when it was all made painfully clear to me. When you are a child, there is joy. There is laughter. And most of all, there is trust. Trust in your fellows. When you are an adult...then comes suspicion, hatred, and fear. If children ran the world, it would be a place of eternal bliss and cheer. Adults run the world; and there is war, and enmity, and destruction unending. Adults who take charge of things muck them up, and then produce a new generation of children and say, "The children are the hope of the future." And they are right. Children are the hope of the future. But adults are the damnation of the present, and children become adults as surely as adults become worm food. Adults are the death of hope. ↗

— Peter David

#adults #childhood #children #distrust #hatred

When you become a teenager, you step onto a bridge. You may already be on it. The opposite shore is adulthood. Childhood lies behind. The bridge is made of wood. As you cross, it burns behind you ↗

— Gail Carson Levine

#bridge #childhood #childhood

I always looked forward to being an adult, because I thought the adult world was, well—adult. That adults weren’t cliquey or nasty, that the whole notion of being cool, or in, or popular would case to be the arbiter of all things social, but I was beginning to realize that the adult world was as nonsensically brutal and socially perilous as the kingdom of childhood. ↗

— Peter Cameron

#nonsense

O, 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

#fairy-tales #life

Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood. ↗

— Janet Napolitano

#adulthood #children #could #designed #educational

We're romantic. We're hopeful. We're done for. The worst part of this all? The idea of struggle and compromise seems exciting to us-that's how stupid we are. There's no stopping fools, I say. We're still kids at heart. Those dreams are still there. Now we just have to go chase them. ↗

— Alida Nugent

#dreams #dreams

Would it be possible for me to see something from up there?" asked Milo politely. "You could," said Alec, "but only if you try very hard to look at things as an adult does." Milo tried as hard as he could, and, as he did, his feet floated slowly off the ground until he was standing in the air next to Alex Bings. He looked around very quickly and, an instant later, crashed back down to the earth again. "Interesting, wasn't it?" asked Alex. "Yes, it was," agreed Milo, rubbing his head and dusting himself off, "but I think I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall. ↗

— Norton Juster

#childhood #perspective #childhood

People thought becoming an adult meant that all your acts had consequences; in fact it was just the opposite. ↗

— Chad Harbach

#adulthood #consequences-life-lessons #life #meaninglessness #art

Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness. ↗

— Richard Russo

#god #sin #imagination