#maturity

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life. ↗

— Honoré de Balzac

#psychology #youth #change

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

— Albert Einstein

#i #live #maturity #painful #solitude

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity. ↗

— Marlon Brando

#bum #expression #impulse #life #maturity

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, "If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it." They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could. ↗

— Heather O'Neill

#growing-up #maturity #age

Like the culture that created me, I am receding into the past at a rate of knots. Soon I'll need a whole row of footnotes if anybody under thirty-five is going to comprehend the least thing I say. ↗

— Angela Carter

#aging #maturity #age

Whatever can be threatened, whatever can be shaken, whatever you fear cannot stand, is destined to crash. Do not go down with the ship. Let that which is destined to become the past slip away. Believe that the real you is that which beckons from the future. If it is a sadder you, it will be a wiser one. And dawn will follow the darkness sooner or later. Rebirth can never come without death. ↗

— Robert M. Price

#maturity #rebirth #wisdom #death

I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing--I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams. ↗

— Dara Torres

#ambition #dreams #experience #goals #identity

If yage were a word that meant “maturity,” then every single woman I’ve dated has been at least twice my yage. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#funny #maturity #women #age

Mr. Darwin refers to the multitude of the individual of every species, which, from one cause or another, perish either before, or soon after attaining maturity. ↗

— Richard Owen

#another #attaining #before #cause #darwin

The narrator analyzes that the maturing, passing away boy within him, "had issued me a challenge as he passed the baton to the man in me: He had challenged me to have the courage to become a gentle, harmless man. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#manhood #maturity #courage