Quotes & Sayings About Growing Through Life

The vast majority of people are born, grow up, struggle and go through life in misery and failure, not realizing that it would be just as easy to switch over and get exactly what they want out of life, not recognizing that the mind attracts the thing it dwells upon. — Napoleon Hill

I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something! — Gene Roddenberry

The whole of the Sermon [Matt 5-7] is framed within Jesus's announcement that what his fellow Jews had longed for over many generations was now at last coming to pass - but that new kingdom didn't look like they had thought it would. Indeed, in some ways it went in exactly the other direction. No violence, no hatred of enemies, no anxious protection of land and property against the pagan hordes. In short, no frantic intensification of the ancestral codes of life. Rather, a glad and unworried trust in the creator God, whose kingdom is now at last starting to arrive, leading to a glad and generous heart toward other people, even those who are technically "enemies." Faith, hope, and love: here they are again. They are the language of life, the sign in the present of green shoots growing through the concrete of this sad old world, the indication that the creator God is on the move, and that Jesus's hearers and followers can be part of what he's now doing. — N. T. Wright

Christ subjected himself to the law of the seed in the earth, to the law of rest and growth. He was "one of the children of the year," growing through rest, secret in his mothers womb, receiving the warmth of the sun through her, living the life of dependence, helplessness, littleness, darkness, and silence which, by a mystery of the Eternal Law, is the life of natural growth. — Caryll Houselander

If you still are growing, you go through the archetype of the statesman or stateswoman. You stop asking "What are my quotas?" and stop saying "What is in it for me?" and "How much can I get?" You begin to say, instead, "What are your quotas?" and, "How may I serve?" Providing for others becomes much more important in your life than what you can get for yourself. — Wayne Dyer

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,
without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.
In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:
since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we will be. — Pablo Neruda

You're not a bad person for having negative thoughts or feelings. You're not getting it wrong or failing in life. You're not less spiritual, less human, or less evolved for going through an emotional funk or for feeling stuck. At your core, you are a learning and growing being. And you are doing just that. — Emily Maroutian

The seed of the tree falls into the dark earth. Painfully it breaks open and grows towards the light, the higher principle. Growing is a heaping up of small things, through many moments of struggling, fighting the Holy Wind, the formative powers, to find meaning in life, building awareness one step at a time, until one learns how to go with the Wind, how to transcend the pain of daily existence and shed new seed for a new day. — Wilna Van Der Walt

A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow in their own gift. — Jean Vanier

Making mistakes means you're learning, growing, pushing ... that you yearn for something and aren't afraid to chase after it. You're being creative and contributing to this world, even if it doesn't work out as you hoped. Go ahead and make mistakes. For once in your life, quit playing it safe and make some spectacular mistakes ... Make glorious mistakes that will echo through the ages. Make mistakes that no one has ever thought of! Don't limit yourself, no matter how outlandish. Reach out and strive for something beyond all dreams. — Elizabeth Camden

I was just a big fan of tattoos always growing up, and I wanted something cool that symbolizes what I've been through in my life, and everything on my chest and my back is like a collage. — Kevin Durant

The weed crushed and pressed by the heavy rock may slowly and gently grow up anew helped by the fresh air, sunshine, and sympathetic rain. On the other hand, the rock is often broken through exposure to nature and weathering. Life is a strong power to grow in tenderness; this fact may be considered as having a close relation with human life. At the same time tenderness has sometimes stronger power against stiffness or hardening due to extreme strain. — Kyuzo Mifune

She felt no relief at having survived this attack. No heady satisfaction surged through her because she'd made it to shore. She felt only a growing emptiness. A gathering dark. For this was her life now. Not boredom and lectures, but hell-flames and assassins. Massacres and endless flight. — Susan Dennard

Each of us has about 40 chances to accomplish our goals in life. I learned this first through agriculture, because all farmers can expect to have about 40 growing seasons, giving them just 40 chances to improve on every harvest. — Howard Graham Buffett

The most important beauty is not that with which you were born, but the beauty of character which grows through a woman's life and maybe never stops growing. — Oscar De La Renta

But there was no plan.
For the first time in her pirating life, someone had bested her.
It's not him, Andi's mind whispered. It can't be him.
And yet, the Marauder was a corpse. It was already growing cold in the cabin, Andi's breath appearing before her in the white clouds.
Do something, Andi's mind screamed. Get us out of this. You can't go back, Andi, you can never go back.
Fear spiked through her, in and around, trying to still her like the ship.
But she was the Bloody Baroness. She was the captain of the Marauder, the greatest starship in Mirabel, and she had a crew waiting on her word. — Sasha Alsberg

Samsara-the Wheel of Existence, literally, the "Perpetual Wandering"-is the name by which is designated the sea of life ever restlessly heaving up and down, the symbol of this continuous process of ever again and again being born, growing old, suffering, and dying. (It) is constantly changing from moment to moment, (as lives) follow continuously one upon the other through inconceivable periods of time. Of this Samsara, a single lifetime constitutes only a vanishingly tiny fraction. — Gautama Buddha

I can't but say it is an awkward sight To see one's native land receding through The growing waters; it unmans one quite, Especially when life is rather new. — Lord Byron

Keep in mind that part of growing up is dealing with difficult issues, and the benefits can be great if you have the courage to ask for help. Human beings are not designed to go through life alone. No one has to bear the burden of tough times all by themselves. — Jack Canfield

Married life, offered in service to God, is such a good and rewarding life. Let's give ourselves fully to it; let's keep building our "marital house" until we die, pursuing each other, forgiving each other, loving each other, and growing together through the years. If we do this, we will, like Anne, be richly blessed with a lifelong love. — Gary L. Thomas

When I was growing up, my mother, who had been through a lot of terrible things in life, taught me that when life is tough your instinct is to close your heart. But if you can accept what happened and reach out to someone, there will always be someone less fortunate, or someone that can bring a solution and help your life. — Jane Seymour

Secrets are a sneaky little seed. You can hide them, you can bury them, you can disguise them, and cover them up. But then just when you think your secret has rotted away and decayed into nothing, it stirs back to life. It sprouts roots and stems, crawls its way through the mud and muck, growing and climbing, and bursting through the surface, blooming for everyone to see. That's the lesson here. The truth always comes out eventually. — Kimberly Belle

A lot of times, our guides are at the same level that we are at spiritually. We are their jobs, and they are growing through our life experiences. People have this illusion that their guides are all-knowing and all-wise, and why would we need God if we have our guides? — Echo Bodine

Life is a school, a place for us to learn and grow. We, like Adam and Eve, experience 'growing pains' through the sorrow and contamination of a lone and dreary world. These experiences may include sin, but they also include mistakes, disappointments, and the undeserved pain of adversity. The blessed news of the gospel is that the Atonement of Jesus Christ can purify all the uncleanness and sweeten all the bitterness we taste. — Bruce C. Hafen

However, it [singing] wasn't until halfway through high school that it dawned on me that singing wasn't just a hobby, it was something I had a growing need for in my life, and that was about when I adopted the neglected guitar I found under our piano and started singing about all the things I could never say. — Kina Grannis

I love my parents. Coming out to them was sort of coming out to myself. I educated them, and I wanted our relationship to keep growing. I wanted them to be a part of my life still. I wanted to be able to share with them what I was going through. — Randy Harrison

WORK MAKES MEN. A university is not merely a place for making scholars, it is a place for making Christians. A farm is not a place for growing corn, it is a place for growing character, and a man has no character except that which is developed by his life and thought. God's Spirit does the building through the acts which a man performs from day to day. A student who cons out every word in his Latin and Greek instead of consulting a translation finds that honesty is translated into his character. If he works out his mathematical problems thoroughly, he not only becomes a mathematician, but becomes a thorough man. It is by constant and conscientious attention to daily duties that thoroughness and conscientiousness and honorableness are imbedded in our beings. Character is — Henry Drummond

People who have experienced war have learned to accept the trials and sufferings of life. Among many wise, older citizens in American society, there is no desperate flight from suffering. Instead, there is a recognition that it is a part of life that can have some benefit. Yet among those in the post-World War II generation, a wisp of happiness is the goal, and suffering must be avoided at all costs. If there are hardships in a relationship, end it. If there is an unpleasant emotion, medicate it. It is a generation that perceives no value to any hardship. Like a pampered child who never experienced the regular storms of life, we lack the skill of growing through our trials. — Edward T. Welch

Personal change, growth, development, identity formation
these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events
a job, a mate, a child
through which we will pass into a life of relative ease. — Lillian B. Rubin

These things have a life of there own and never existed when I was growing up certainly worrying when one would get made. It's kind of amazing how that one movie kept living through all these years. — Stockard Channing

I've got to fight for that connection with God all the time no matter what you're going through in life. I'm growing up. I'm maturing. But I definitely think that the backbone of this is the freedom and creativity I have without the fear of failing. If I fail, what's going to happen? Nothing. I'm not looking for my self-worth in the sport. — Kelly Clark

I think that everybody in life probably goes through obstacles at different times in life. I wouldn't really call them obstacles, I think that's just called growing up, and I think it's hard to be in the industry at such a young age — Kirsten Dunst

I'm expressing the feelings of mankind today through the Blue Dog. The dog is always having problems of the heart, of growing up, the problems of life. The dog looks at us and asks, 'Why am I here? What am I doing? Where am I going?' Those are the same questions we ask ourselves. People look at the paintings, and the paintings speak back to them. — George Rodrigue

To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply. — Charles Baudelaire

WILL YOU DANCE WITH ME

As we stand here,
Hand in hand,
Under the neon lights
Of Truth and Love.
I'm asking you to
Dance with me.
To twirl,
Kick,
Drop,
Jump,
And fly
With me.
Skidding and
Sliding across
The dancefloor of life,
I want you to
Glide with me.
Through the
Saddest and
Happiest songs,
The fastest highs
To the longest and
Slowest lows,
I want you to
Flow through
Them all
With
Me. — Suzy Kassem

Battered by shifing currents and a cold, unrelenting wind, we sailed past deserted islands crowded with pines and a ghost tree growing staight out of the water, its gaunt trunk and scrawny branches raised heavenward like an outcast pleading for his life. Now, having reached the north shore, we were doggedly searching for the hidden rivulet that would take us into The Peak. We were trapped in muddy water barbed with grasses and covered with thick green algae, which broke apart in clumps, then, after we'd edged through, resealed, erasing all signs of our passing.

The wind had dissipated - strange, as it'd been so turbulent minutes ago out on the lake. Dense trees surrounded us, packed like hordes of stranded prisoners. There wasn't a single bird, not a scuttle through the branches, not a cry - as if everything alive had fled. — Marisha Pessl

Hope is a fragile thing, Peter continued, as fragile as a flower. Its fragility makes it easy to sneer at, by people who see life as a dark and difficult ordeal, people who get angry when something they can't believe in themselves gives comfort to others. They prefer to crush the flower underfoot, as if to say: See how weak this thing is, see how easily it can be destroyed. But, in truth, hope is one of the strongest things in the universe. Empires fall, civilizations vanish into dust, but hope always comes back, pushing up through the ashes, growing from seeds that are invisible and invincible. — Michel Faber

India went through a dramatic revolution after the '90s when our economy started opening up for the first time and Indians were now experiencing the Western life, if you will. Drugs and sex and a lot of those influences came in as the economy stabilized, and we were growing up and experiencing that. The Indian writing market was very small at that time. Our literature was very attuned to what Western audiences were interested in, so everybody was writing about the slums in India and magic realism or stories about Hindus and Muslims and partition. — Karan Bajaj

I guess because I had such a horrible life growing up, going from place to place not knowing what I was gonna do and ending up being homeless, there was a lot of pain and a lot of anger that was coming out through my guitar playing. — Dave Mustaine

It's vital to be growing through your life rather than going through your life. The object is not to change other people or situations; it's to do the inner work they stimulate. — Wally Amos

People keep asking what I do for a living and I keep saying that I don't believe in making a living. That it's a concept that has been twisted. I tell them I believe in making a life and money is a distracting object if there's anything left at the end of the day and I just want to go on well. Make it through the day. So I smile and raise my glass and they laugh and take my hand, saying "here's to the youth", pointing at me. And I might just be young
and naive
for I still believe in the freedom of choice
of how to spend your life.
So they toast to the youth, who still think she's free,
and that's all fine by me. — Charlotte Eriksson

Occasionally, events in one's life become clearer through the prism of experience, a phrase which simply means that things tend to be clearer as time goes on. For instance, when a person is just born, they usually have no idea what curtains are and spend a great deal of their first months wondering why on earth Mommy and Daddy have hung large pieces of cloth over each window in the nursery. But as the person grows older, the idea of curtains becomes clearer through the prism of experience. The person will learn the word "curtains" and notice that they are actually quite handy for keeping a room dark when it is time to sleep, and for decorating an otherwise boring window area. Eventually, they will entirely accept the idea of curtains of their own, or venetian blinds, and it is all due to the prism of experience. — Lemony Snicket

I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without even realizing it. — Shauna Niequist

I've never heard anyone say the really deep lessons of life have come in times of ease and comfort. But, I have heard many saints say every significant advance I've ever made in grasping in the depth of God's love and growing deep with Him, have come through suffering. — John Piper

She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever. Where was it now
the glory and the dream? — L.M. Montgomery

One day ask your daughter the kind of mother she wants to be! One day ask your son the kind of father he wants to be! One day ask yourself the kind of parent you have been! And one day, ask yourself how you have run the race of life through the good and the bad times with the baton of life in your hands! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Growing old can mean more than slowing down; it can be a time of truly growing down and incarnating further. Because the inner genius that tries to incarnate through us will keep calling for us to awaken further until we come to the end of our life adventure. — Michael Meade

I think we can provide better stories through providing mentors, and certainly part of my story is providing mentors to kids growing up without dads. I think positive male role models go a long way in terms of rescuing kids from a life of trouble.I think positive male role models go a long way in terms of rescuing kids from a life of trouble. — Donald Miller

We routinely replace damanged parts of ourselves with new ones that are, arguably, more resilient, more able to handle challenges. As long as we avoid the trap of growing our skin so thick that nothing gets through, getting bruised can only boost our ability to cope with whatever life throws at us. — Mari Ruti

Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it - either through effort or by some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives. — John Dewey

There were many influences on me while growing up. In the late Seventies and early Eighties when I was growing up in Hyderabad, it was a bit more laid-back, and that gave you time to think about things differently without perhaps being caught up in the narrow approach to one's journey through life. — Satya Nadella

But always and sometimes questioning the old modes
And the new wondering, the poem, growing up through the floor,
Standing tall in tubers, invading and smashing the ritual
Parlor, demands to be met on its own terms now,
Now that the preliminary negotiations are at last over. — John Ashbery

So what is the solution for those who are struggling with the process of maintaining a positive mental attitude? Keep at it! If you plant a seed in the ground and water it every day, it starts to grow towards the surface. If you don't know and trust that this seed is growing, you will doubt whether anything at all is happening underneath the surface. You may start to say: "I don't believe in this! I water this piece of ground every day but I never see any results for all my hard work!" Part of life is trusting that if you put in the effort, the outcome is already happening with your very intention and then your action. Eventually, one day, that little plant breaks through the soil with its green, new stem. And from there, you watch it grow stronger and more vital every day (as long as you keep looking after it and watering it!). — David Fox

That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself. — Nick Hornby

Often, the truly great and valuable lessons we learn in life are learned through pain. That's why they call it "growing pains." It's all about yin and yang. And that's not something you order off column A at your local Chinese restaurant. — Fran Drescher

It's my life dream to be able to go and continue going to schools and teaching them about stretching and aerobics, cardio and strength training, because I want them to have a better life than I did. I don't want them to grow up to be me. I want them to be healthy. I want them not to go through eating disorders [like me]. — Richard Simmons

From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame ... — Henry Adams

He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it. — Rachel Joyce

There are many paths through the Ring of Life. They are a constant movement toward self-fulfillment through growth of your mind, expansion of your experiences, widening of your senses and growing your spirit. It's ceaseless and constant throughout one's life. — Frosty Wooldridge

I want to grow up, live my life, experience things, make movies about those experiences and by the time the audience catches up, hopefully they'll have a movie there that helps them get through that next phase when the discover life isn't always like High School Musical. — Zac Efron

It is a turn of events that highlights a certain human arrogance about our destructive powers. It is only hubris to imagine that we can destroy nature, or the world. It is the mirror image of the industrialist's egotistical desire to exploit and control it. And it is true that we can kill off continents of forest and destroy species by the thousands, and even wreak climate change. But once we're gone, the rest of nature will rush on, as it has after so many other cataclysms, growing over and through and out of us. The apocalypse we can create is for ourselves and for our cousins, but not for life on Earth. — Andrew Blackwell

Growing up, I was always creatively inclined, and when YouTube came about, it was like getting the perfect platform to showcase what I wanted. Personally, I was going through a dark phase in my life, and I decided to make videos and basically go by the adage, 'If you want to cheer up yourself, go cheer up someone else.' — Lilly Singh

This the kind of world, if you don't die, you just keep on growing up and living through everything that comes. — J. California Cooper

When I was growing up, people didn't tell me to slow down, to do less, to be calmer, or to practice being content.
In fact, people told me to do the opposite: be involved, challenge myself, stay busy, push through the pain, chase after my goals, swing for the fences, do more, make more, go all out.
But you wanna know something? When it comes to dealing with the hard stuff in life, it's the slowing down and remembering the basics that are most important. Also, all of those other words sound exhausting. — Chad Eastham

...why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life... Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people and the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you're all to yourself that way, you're really yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. As Samuel Spaudling, Esquire, once said, 'Dig in the earth, delve in the soul.' Spin those mower blades, Bill, and walk in the spray of the Fountain of Youth. — Ray Bradbury

Our parents deserve our honor and respect for giving us life itself. Beyond this they almost always made countless sacrifices as they cared for and nurtured us through our infancy and childhood, provided us with the necessities of life, and nursed us through physical illnesses and the emotional stresses of growing up. — Ezra Taft Benson

Coaching staff: I know there's days you look at that film and you want to kill me. I'm not playing defense, taking bad shots, getting too many techs. But you always believe that I can be the guy. Through the tough times, you guys never left my side ... That's something that I really appreciate and I never want to take you guys for granted. I thank you so much for being part of my life. And not just on the basketball court, but giving me talks about growing as a man first, and a basketball player next. — Kevin Durant

the Temple was rebuilt, but by then the religion of Israel had been marked forever by the piety of the exile. Alongside the single Temple, where blood sacrifice was celebrated, arose numerous synagogues, places for meeting and for prayer, and the dominium of the priests yielded to the growing influence of the Pharisees and Scribes, men of the book and of study. In 70 A.D., the Roman legions again destroyed the Temple. But the learned rabbi Joahannah ben-Zakkaj, slipped covertly out of Jerusalem through the siege and obtained permission from Vespasian to continue the teaching of the Torah in the city of Jamnia. The temple has never been rebuilt since, and study, the Talmud, has become the real temple of Israel.24 This complex relationship to the Talmud is in fact a key to understanding the life and work of Mark Rothko. — Annie Cohen-Solal

She was deemed an unfit mother, in spite of the fact that she goes to the gym every day,' Hal once told me.
... Beautiful people are often forgiven for many things
and maybe she's gotten through life that way, but I don't forgive her for anything
and I don't even know what awful things she's done other than showing a lack of parental fitness. — Neal Shusterman

In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears
everything that can delude you so well! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Anarchy has the flexibility to overcome many of the traditional problems of activism by focusing on revolution not as another cause but as a philosophy of living. This philosophy is as concrete as a brick being thrown through a window or flowers growing in the garden. By making our daily lives revolutionary, we destroy the artificial separation between activism and everyday life. Why settle for comrades and fellow activists when we can have friends and lovers? — Curious George Brigade

The only reason I write at all is because I am going through, and growing through, something in my life I want to share with others through my personal experiences. — Daphne Oz

Dear Woman,
You are a beautiful flower of earth, allow the rain to feed you the same strength as the sun. Don't stop growing through the storms, they are sent to test how solid your soil is not too destroy your roots. — Keysha Jade

For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't know that you're able to measure your aggregate wisdom as you go through life. I can't say that I ever feel that I'm sitting on top of a growing mound of wisdom. — Dylan Moran

A giant octopus living way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. It has this tremendously powerful life force, a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it's heading somewhere, moving through the darkness of the ocean ... It takes on all kinds of different shapes - sometimes it's 'the nation,' and sometimes it's 'the law,' and sometimes it takes on shapes that are more difficult and dangerous than that. You can try cutting off its legs, but they just keep growing back. Nobody can kill it. It's too strong, and it lives too far down in the ocean. Nobody knows where its heart is. What I felt then was a deep terror. And a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that I could never run away from this thing, no matter how far I went. And this creature, this thing doesn't give a damn that I'm me or you're you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers. — Haruki Murakami

Joy is what we are, not what we must get. Joy is the realization that all we want or need in life has been etched into our souls. Joy helps us see not what we are "going through," but what we are "growing to"-a greater sense of understanding, accomplishment, and enlightenment. Joy reveals to us the calm at the end of the storm, the peace that surpasses the momentary happiness of pleasure. If we keep our minds centered on joy, joy becomes a state of mind. — Iyanla Vanzant

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

People are vaccinated with dangerous chemicals during their childhood, indoctrinated with immorality through television while growing up, taught to reject God by their teachers, fed with genetically modified food, and led to suspect others by their relatives and friends, and then you wonder why it's so difficult to find a normal person in this modern world, why nobody assumes responsibility for their words and behavior, and why everyone is so selfishly abusive. The biblical apocalypse has begun and the zombies are everywhere. It's just that we call them stupid and selfish instead. But they do act like there's no life inside of them anymore. There are no more normal human beings around. The survivors of this apocalypse are extremely scarce and must be treasured. — Robin Sacredfire

This, the idea of relationships bit, was all conjecture on her part. She herself felt too young to try to figure out her own life, let alone someone else's life near hers, and so she had never even sought out companionship of that type. Jackie thought about dating from time to time in the distant way a person thinks about eventually becoming famous or owning a castle or growing ram's horns. They're all achievable, realistic goals, but by turning objectives into mere fantasies, she never had to go through the trouble of achieving or maintaining them. — Joseph Fink

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Maybe freedom really is nothing left to lose. You had it once in childhood, when it was okay to climb a tree, to paint a crazy picture and wipe out on your bike, to get hurt. The spirit of risk gradually takes its leave. It follows the wild cries of joy and pain down the wind, through the hedgerow, growing ever fainter. What was that sound? A dog barking far off? That was our life calling to us, the one that was vigorous and undefended and curious. — Peter Heller

So in the midst of our struggle with indwelling sin, we must continually keep our focus on the gospel. We must always go back to the truth that even in the face of the fact that so often "I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing" (Rom 7:19), there is no condemnation. God no longer counts our sins against us (Rom 4:8). Or, to say it another way, God wants us to find our primary joy in our objectively declared justification, not in our subjectively perceived sanctification. Regardless of how much progress we make in our pursuit of holiness, it will never come close to the absolute perfect righteousness of Christ that is ours through our union with him in his life and death. So we should learn to live with the discomfort of the justified life. We should accept the fact that as still-growing Christians we will always be dissatisfied with our sanctification. But at the same time, we should remember that in Christ we are justified. — Jerry Bridges

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less. — George Orwell

As guides for the children in our life, we need to find ways to connect their growing understanding of God's Word and His truth to an authentic faith lived life-on-life with others. We need to keep pointing them back to Scripture as the truth in their lives. At the same time, we need to recognize that God has also given us a gift through them - an opportunity to see how powerful a childlike faith can be. — Brian Schulenburg

It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgement - all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual ... The greatest scientific deed of her life - proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them - owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed. — Albert Einstein

I always call that the year it rained in my life. That was one of Maud's euphemisms. There were rainy years, fertile years and sunshine years. The rainy ones were when your life cycles brought losses of some sorts. Fertile years were years of learning and growing and reaching out. Sunshine years were few and far between, but when they came, she told me to soak myself with their happy radiance. They were reward years to her, and they made up for all the suffering, pain and growth we'd persevered through. — Lindsay McKenna

And we shall all carry on with our hearts set on the next best thing ... because we know how we have lived and understand what we have lost, and aren't willing to lose so much the second time through. — Isabel Aanya Leigh

The curse of mortality. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then, through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constitutions deteriorate. Beauty withers. Organs quit. You remember yourself in your prime, and wonder where that person went. As your wisdom and experience are peaking, your traitorous body becomes a prison. — Brandon Mull

I grew up in a small town where you know everyone, .. I've been told all my life that I come from too small a town to compete with some of the guys that competed in a higher level growing up. And that kind of drove me through college and drove me in the minor leagues, because I got to face all those big 5- A [school district] guys in the minors. — Roy Oswalt

The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree, and it is therefore not surprising that the unconscious of present-day man, who no longer feels at home in his world and can base his existence neither on the past that is no more nor on the future that is yet to be, should hark back to the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven - the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible. It seems as if it were only through an experience of symbolic reality that man, vainly seeking his own "existence" and making a philosophy out of it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger. — C. G. Jung

Jung said there are four archetypes adults go through, and these archetypes are reflected in the development of my work. The first archetype is the archetype of the athlete, reflecting the time in our adult life when our primary emphasis is on our body - what it looks like, how beautiful it is, how strong it is, and so on. We identify ourselves with our body. We are our body. Growing adults next move to what Jung called the archetype of the warrior. We take our physical bodies out there to do what warriors do. — Wayne Dyer

I wondered what a man I had encountered the day before on the plane en route to Chicago's O'Hare airport would have made of this. As he tried to push through a crowded aisle, he said loudly: "Life is never easy. And it's never pleasant." I couldn't let this go. I looked up at him from my seat and said, "I do hope life gives you cause to change that opinion. Otherwise you may find that opinion walking ahead of you, giving you more and more reasons to believe it. — Robert Moss

Happiness, as far as we are concerned, is achieved through living a meaningful life, a life that is filled with passion and freedom, a life in which we can grow as individuals and contribute to other people in meaningful ways. Growth and contribution: those are the bedrocks of happiness. Not stuff. This may not sound sexy or marketable or sellable, but it's the cold truth. Humans are happy if we are growing as individuals and if we are contributing beyond ourselves. Without growth, and without a deliberate effort to help others, we are just slaves to cultural expectations, ensnared by the trappings of money and power and status and perceived success. — Joshua Fields Millburn

You know, through pain, you learn a lot about yourself
things you thought you never knew you wanted to learn. And it's kind of like those animals that regrow a part of their body
like a starfish. You might not feel it. You might not even want to grow, but you will. You'll grow that part that broke off, and that growing, that blooming
cannot happen without the pain. — Kelle Hampton

When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive. — Michael Marshall Smith

I'd be devastated if my son grows up to be a hetero. I mean, I'd still love him ... but as a parent you just envision a certain life for your child. I mean, if he's straight, think of all the fabulous things he's going to miss out on. When I think my son might never know the joys of having a quarter share on Fire Island and walking through Judy Garland Memorial Park on the way to the Meat Rack. — Debra Messing

The boy and the man must be raised to see the possibility of self worth, then meet a few others who provide the vision of a road toward it, then spend a lifetime pursing that worth through action and relationship. One of the great tragedies in human life is to be born a male and not be guided toward the value of a man. — Michael Gurian

You're growing and changing, and eventually, you can go from having all these friends to feeling like you have no one, because you've been betrayed, or you've gone through things. But in this moment, I'm in such a good place with my friends. I feel confident and I'm happy there are people who I can truly trust in my life. — Selena Gomez

Keep going is keep growing only if one keeps adding values in others' lives through the path of his life's journey — Anuj