quotations about maturity
An obstinate, ungovernable self-sufficiency plainly points out to us that state of imperfect maturity at which the graceful levity of youth is lost, and the solidity of experience is not yet acquired.
JUNIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress -- to the future.
ERICH MARIA REMARQUE
All Quiet on the Western Front
If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic, the part of you that you treasure most ... is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?
KENNETH CAIN
Emergency Sex: And Other Desperate Measures
It is the duty of every man to preserve and develop, to full maturity, the symmetry of those powers whereby the intellectual, emotional, and moral part of his nature may become enlarged, to minister in full measure to the noblest well-being of his fellow creatures, and thereby enhance his own happiness and serenity.
JAMES ELLIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The elevation of the mind in its maturity is valuable, most especially from the discriminative retrospect it commands over the fairy scenes of childhood.
CHARLES MORDAUNT
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.
GEORGE E. VAILLANT
Adaptation to Life
Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of not knowing.
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI
House of Leaves
I'd proven to the world that maturity, experience, dedication, and ingenuity can make up for a little senescence.
DANA TORRES
Age Is Just a Number
Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.
HERMANN HESSE
Gertrude
Our pleasures resemble those fabulous trees described by St. Oderic; the fruits of which they bring forth are no sooner ripened into maturity, than they are transformed into birds and fly away.
INGULPHUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
To the intelligent and virtuous, old age presents a scene of tranquil enjoyments, of obedient appetite, of well-regulated affections, of maturity in knowledge, and of calm preparation for immortality.
J. G. PERCIVAL
attributed, Day's Collacon
I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.
HERMANN HESSE
Peter Camenzind