#maturity

What was to be the value of the long looked forward to, Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders, Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit? The serenity only a deliberate hebetude, The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience. The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, For the pattern is new in every moment And every moment is a new and shocking Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#experience #knowledge #maturity #wisdom #age

When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#hermann-hesse #maturity #roots #soul #youth

So remember those who win the game Lose the love they sought to gain In debitures of quality and dubious integrity Their small-town eyes will gape at you In dull surprise when payment due Exceeds accounts received at seventeen ↗

— Janis Ian

#life #loneliness #maturity #popularity #youth

The other day the President said, I know you've had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. He paused, then said, would you like a puppy? ↗

— Dan Quayle

#faith #had #i #know #like

What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. From an acting point of view, that's how I approached the part. ↗

— Christopher Reeve

#approached #hero #how #i #makes

Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values. ↗

— Joshua L. Liebman

#immediate #long-term #maturity #person #pleasures

If any human being is to reach full maturity both the masculine and feminine sides of the personality must be brought up into consciousness. ↗

— M. Esther Harding

#being #both #brought #consciousness #feminine

The older you get, the more you understand how your conscience works. The biggest and only critic lives in your perception of people's perception of you rather than people's perception of you. ↗

— Criss Jami

#biggest #confidence #conscience #control #critic

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. -Abraham Joshua Heschel, theology professor (1907-1972) ↗

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

#humor #life-lessons #maturity #age

The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you’re better off not touching it until you’re all grown up. I’m going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don’t open it. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#children #learning #maturity #reading #age