Growing Up Is Hard To Do Quotes & Sayings

One of the greatest tragedies of growing up is the discovery that your parents- and your teachers, and your sports heroes, and your favorite actors, singers, YouTube sensations- are fallible. Adults don't know all, and what they do know, they often won't tell you- because they've got their own agendas, or because they want to shield you from the hard truths "for your own good." Adults lie, they betray, they screw up in every way possible ... — Robin Wasserman

It's also hard for me to understand growing up not knowing where I came from. I searched for my parents - I started when I was twenty; I found both my mother and my father when I was twenty-two. Trying to catch up on twenty-two years that we can never get back, trying to reconcile that - that's a hard thing for me. — Michael Franti

When the topic is growing income inequality, it's hard to prettify an imbalance between the rich and everybody else, so instead, conservatives try to argue that it doesn't exist. — Timothy Noah

I've never thought about the end of my career. I've had this growing motto in my life to live day to day - and when you live day to day, it's hard to talk years. — Troy Polamalu

Occupy is anything but a protest movement. That's why it has been so hard for news agencies to express or even discern the 'demands' of the growing legions of Occupy participants around the nation, and even the world. — Douglas Rushkoff

One year later, I grew out of my clothes because, it turns out, growing fourteen inches in a summer is easy. It's growing out of a label that's hard. Which — Jennifer Niven

When young, we're anxious - understandably - to find out if we've got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you - in particular you, of this generation - may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can ...
And this is actually O.K. If we're going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously - as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. "Succeeding," whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there's the very real danger that "succeeding" will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended. — George Saunders

I know it's hard to see," he said, "but God shows me his work in you every time we meet. I see your faith growing inside you like a beautiful spring bud, just ready to blossom. Whatever you think you're facing, the obstacles you's struggling to overcome, they's like rain feeding that bud inside you. Don't fear the storm. He's in the storm, just like he's in the gentle breeze. He gots you right where he wants you." I hugged — Jennifer H. Westall

Over the years she had learned to fold down rising emotion just as she would fold the clean bedsheets, the sheet growing smaller and tighter with each pass until all that remained of that wide wrinkled expanse of cotton was a hard closed-in square. — Tara Conklin

I would definitely write to the kid that I was before, to embrace the moment. I think that often times when you're coming of age or growing up you look forward and you work really hard instead of sitting back and relaxing and enjoying the moment. — Sean Mackin

Can I have a motorcycle when I get old enough?"
"If you take care of it."
"What do you have to do?"
"Lot's of things. You've been watching me."
"Will you show me all of them?"
"Sure."
"Is it hard?"
"Not if you have the right attitudes. It's having the right attitudes that's hard."
"Oh."
After a while I see he is sitting down again. Then he says, "Dad?"
"What?"
"Will I have the right attitudes?"
"I think so," I say. "I don't think that will be any problem at all. — Robert M. Pirsig

If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together, you can feel everything growing. We're all living together, even if most folks don't act like it. We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree. — Hue

It's in the difficult times that we're growing and you can't just rebuke everything hard. We've got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test. — Joel Osteen

Some of what makes growing up hard for famous kids is that they don't have room to do immature stuff. I was really happy that I could go to school and hang out behind the alley and be somewhat irresponsible. — Tavi Gevinson

You may take it from me, that however hard you try - or don't try; whatever you do - or don't do; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; every way and every day: the parent is always wrong. So it is no good bothering about it. When the little pests grow up they will certainly tell you exactly what you did wrong in their case. But never mind; they will be just as wrong themselves in their turn. — Gwen Raverat

Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave fingerprints
On furniture and walls
But every day I'm growing up
And soon I'll be so tall
That all those little handprints
Will be hard to recall
So here's a special handprint
Just so you can say
This is how my fingers looked
When I placed them here today. — Drew Magary

Of course I'm troubled by huge consumer debt levels - we've pushed consumer credit very hard in the US. Eventually, if it keeps growing, it will stop growing. As Herb Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." When it stops, it may be unpleasant. Other than Herb Stein's quote, I have no comment. But the things that trouble you are troubling me. — Charlie Munger

I think the more
she has failed at things like relationships
and parenting, the more she has cut
herself off from feeling bad about those
things. And if you don't let yourself feel
bad, sooner or later you stop feeling
good, too. You insulate yourself. Build
up layers, like stacking paper, everything
growing heavier. And when the weight
becomes too much, those layers compress.
Become hard. Sad, really, to think that
Kristina has turned herself into cardboard. — Ellen Hopkins

As it turned out, almost every notion I had on my 13th birthday about my future turned out to be a total waste of my time. When I thought of myself as an adult, all I could imagine was someone thin, and smooth, and calm, to whom things ... happened. Some kind of souped-up princess with a credit card. I didn't have any notion about self-development, or following my interests, or learning big life lessons, or, most important, finding out what I was good at and trying to earn a living from it. I presumed that these were all things that some grown-ups would come along and basically tell me what to do about at some point, and that I really shouldn't worry about them. I didn't worry about what I was going to do. What I did worry about, and thought I should work hard at, was what I should be, instead. I thought all of my efforts should be concentrated on being fabulous, rather than doing fabulous things. — Caitlin Moran

You think that it must be great to be Superman but it's also hard to be Superman, especially when growing up. — Charles Roven

Whereas an art that affects you in the moment, but which you then find hard to remember, is straining to bring you to another level. It offers images or ideas from that other level, that other way of being, which is why you find them hard to remember. But it has opened you to the possibility of growing into what you are not yet, which is exactly what art should do. — Maggie Nelson

Even in the wolfswood, you never found more than two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine was unheard of. The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves, bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide smooth trunks were bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that crusted in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. — George R R Martin

When I look back, no matter how hard I try I can see clear break between one phase and another. It is a seamless flow - although flow is too strong a word. More a sort of busy stasis, a sort of running on the spot. Even that was too fast for me, however, I was always a little way behind, trotting in the rear of my own life. In Dublin I was still the boy growing up at Coolgrange, in America I was the callow young man of Dublin days, on the islands I became a kind of American. And nothing was enough. Everything was coming, was on the way, was about to be. Stuck in the past, I was always peering beyond the present towards a limitless future. Now, I suppose, the future may be said to have arrived. — John Banville

I remember when I was growing up and there would be sick people in the church. I was always so sensitive to them sitting in the pews alone, and I would not pass by without saying hello. But even at those tender ages of 5 through 14, I felt like they carried the plague, and after seeing them I would turn around praying really hard to never experience sickness like that, ever. I'd pray that I wouldn't make God angry enough to curse me like that with really awful things, but I didn't think about grace. I did not understand that it does not work that way, that God's grace is so much bigger than our sin because of Jesus - but I do get it now. We go through what we do so that we can fulfill God's glory in our lives. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

This is what I've learned, in my life: Headbanging is crucial. Growing up is hard to do. There's nothing wrong with wearing a dress. — Hayley Williams

Everything I've done in my career is a result of growing up in rural Oklahoma, because if I hadn't had the training from Mama and Daddy to work hard, to do what I'm told, to take directions, to mind and to do a good job at anything I set out to do, then I wouldn't be where I am today. — Reba McEntire

We can all agree that first loves can be a scary thing, and that growing up is hard to do. — Meg Cabot

'Thirteen' was really hard on my family. I wrote this movie about them and their flaws and imperfections and what it was like growing up. It was from one kid's perspective and not a well rounded one. You get older, and it's like, 'How dare I portray my father as being a totally vacant, careless schmuck?' — Nikki Reed

Just being young and growing up in this business is hard. Just growing up in general is hard. — Justin Bieber

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised. — Lance Armstrong

I'm a strong supporter of comfort breeds complacency. Growing up poor I wasn't comfortable, my mom had to work so hard and I woke up one day and decided I was not going to come home until I could help her pay the bills. — Farrah Gray

Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health. — Andrea Lavinthal

This memory was both happy and sad: happy because it was so pleasant, and sad because it made Penelope think about how much she missed Swanburne
the girls, the teachers, Miss Mortimer. Or perhaps it was her own much younger self, that pint-sized person whom she could never be again, whom she missed. It was hard to say. — Maryrose Wood

Growing up in public is especially hard sometimes. — Annette Funicello

It's really impossible for athletes to grow up. On the one hand, you're still a child, still playing a game. But on the other hand, you're a superhuman hero that everyone dreams of being. No wonder we have such a hard time understanding who we are. — Billie Jean King

Anybody who knows me knows I'm passionate about American football. I gave this game everything I had. In college, that's what I looked to do. Everything. Everything for so long, and all you hear growing up is that hard work pays off, hard work pays off, hard work pays off. — La'el Collins

Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become. Teccam claims it is better to have a mouthful of poison than a secret of the heart. Any fool will spit out poison, he says, but we hoard these painful treasures. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. There they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but — Patrick Rothfuss

Young people are growing in plain sight, there is no place for them to hide, no cocoon. It's hard — Rachel Vail

I kind of do this awkward body language because, growing up, I had a really hard time expressing myself vocally. — Analeigh Tipton

The old don was finding it hard to live in Christian hope and the general trajectory of his thoughts was retrospective rather than anticipatory. He had recently met his first wife in a pub for a drink and he had expected, foolishly and romantically, that they might speak about the love that they had once shared and what might have been had they stayed together, but instead they had talked about growing deaf, their arthritis, and how much time they had left on earth. 'Old — James Runcie

I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers. — Sarah Dessen

Writing is far too hard work to say what someone else wants me to. Serving it as a craft, using it as a way of growing in my own understanding, seems to me to be a beautiful way to live. And if that product is shareable with other people, so much the better. — Jane Rule

What's positive is moving from a place of growing in faith to really feeling more grounded in faith, to understand that faith is hard, that I'll stumble, that I'll make mistakes, that I'll sin. But, that's part of being on a faith path; it's part of being a human being. — David Gregory

What we've established (in San Diego) with my growing family is hard to re-create. It's hard to up and re-create that. I know that moves are part of life. But that certainty is fair to say that (not being sold on moving to Los Angeles) is part of it. The good thing is I'm not under contract in a year where we'd potentially be in Los Angeles. — Philip Rivers

Growing fourteen inches in a summer is easy. It's growing out of a label that's hard. — Jennifer Niven

Not to psychologize, but it's hard growing up in a family of 14 to ever feel like you're the center of the universe, or that you're that special or different. Because when it comes down to it, you're still fighting for food at the dinner table. — Ronan Farrow

He considered the hard times in his life. All the things he had been afraid of. All those years wasted, he told himself, because I was terrified of being different. That's why all us fifty-four-year-olds end up looking so much alike. All of us are terrified of being different. — Stuart McLean

The biggest thing is having a son. I got attached to him. Seeing him periodically is hard. Watching him grow up on pictures and videos is hard. — Shawn Marion