Quotes & Sayings About Maturity And Wisdom

The clash is born of the fact that the child within me sees with undiluted clarity what the adult within me is incessantly working to deny. And in these most vexing moments, to be the adult is to defer to the child. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child ... that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are old people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticize everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shriveled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child's heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of compassion and forgiveness. They become a community's hidden treasures, sources of unity and life. They are true contemplatives at the heart of community. — Jean Vanier

Understanding and love require a wisdom that comes only with age. — Rollo May

Childishness and childlikeness are two very different things. To know a childlike person, is to know a very mature person; to know a childish person, is to know a very immature person. To know childlikeness is to know original wisdom; to know childishness is to know original error. And there are many children more mature than adults, many adults less mature than children. — C. JoyBell C.

To leave the comforts of home, the mother world, one must have some place to go. Admittedly, the rites of passage of traditional cultures were to initiate the youth into a simpler society, a more homogenous culture than ours. As well, their interest lay not in the individuation of the person but in the integration of the unformed person into the collective definition of tribal masculinity. Still, take away such psychically charged images of identity, take away the wisdom of the elders, take away the community of men, and one has the modern world. — James Hollis

Being loved means; are disagreements welcome in my relationships? If you cant disagree with someone then you live in a tyranny and if you live in a tyranny then you are only loved to the degree that you erase yourself and conform to the irrational expectations of bullies. That isn't love obviously.
Now if somebody in you life demands that you not disagree with them and gets angry, "offended", or outraged should you disagree with them then, that person is not a good person. It's pretty narcissistic. It's somebody who does not have the maturity, wisdom, and ego strength to handle, and in fact welcome disagreements.
When people disagree with me as a whole I think it's a great opportunity for learning. People don't want to expose topics that might cause disagreement because, if the disagreement is punished then the illusion of being loved by good people is shattered. — Stefan Molyneux

The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal patterns and rhythms of the Christian life in a community, so that we may bear fruit like a well-watered tree. Despite common appearances, the church is the place where God's new creation is coming into existence and being sustained by the Spirit like a great vineyard. — Michael Horton

If you see the humanity in the world, grains of sand that bring everything to a halt - it's corruption, clashes of egos, human factors more than resources. So, how to avoid that? There's a lack of human maturity. So it's not a vain or futile exercise to perfect yourself to some extent before you serve others, otherwise it's like cutting the wheat when it's still green. And nobody is fed by that. So we need a minimum of readiness to efficiently and wisely be at the service of others. So compassion needs also to be sort of enlightened by wisdom. Otherwise, it's blind. — Matthieu Ricard

India is a democracy; it is in our DNA. As far as the different political parties are concerned, I firmly believe that they have the maturity and wisdom to make decisions that are in the best interests of the nation. — Narendra Modi

Maturity gives us jealous eyes. We look with jealousy on the younger woman because she doesn't know as much now as we do, and, oh, what we could do with our wisdom and her face. — Virginia Graham

There is a big difference between a boy and a man, the level of maturity will tell. — Akinwumi Jarule

-just on the verge of
becoming a woman, and in these three years and almost five months, I'd
reached maturity. I was older than the mountains outside. The wisdom
of the attic was in my bones, etched on my brain, part of my flesh. — V.C. Andrews

True maturity is in attitude and a true attitude is maturity. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When emotions dominate, maturity and wisdom deteriorate — Dennis Prager

Children's and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that's why so many adults read YA: we're never done coming of age. — Betsy Cornwell

Change is the mother of growth and maturity. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

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

If you happen to be white in a white country; pretty according to the dictates of fashion; rich in a country where money is adored, it's almost impossible to grow up and to grow up honest inside. It is almost impossible. Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging. But to grow up, to take responsibility for the time you take up, and the space you occupy, to honor every living person for his or her humanity, that is to grow up. — Maya Angelou

It is only reasonable to allow the administration of affairs to mothers before their children reach the age prescribed by law at which they themselves can be responsible. But that father would have reared them ill who could not hope that in their maturity they would have more wisdom and competence than his wife. — Michel De Montaigne

No wonder such a big part of growing old is learning to lower one's expectations, only we call that maturity and wisdom so as not to sound too defeatist. When you are young you demand ecstasy; when you are old you settle for anything short of agony. — Jonathan Hull

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

Perfection is always found in maturity, whether it be in the animal or in the intellectual world. Reflection is the mother of wisdom, and wisdom the parent of success. — James F. Cooper

I was not 15 anymore, and choices no longer had that same clear, bright edge to them. — Geraldine Brooks

We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom.
... Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls. — Peggy Noonan

It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Youth is a marvelous garment. How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity, when, as in her own case, one ceases to be une jeune fille un peu folle, and becomes merely a woman, worst of all, a wife. The very young have their troubles, but they have at least a part to play, the part of being very young. — Iris Murdoch

The conversation of most middle-class Americans, we are told, revolves around consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, where to eat, the price of the neighbor's house, what's on sale this week, our clothes or someone else's, the best car on the market this year, where to spend a vacation. Apparently we can't stop eating, shopping, or consuming. Success is measured not in terms of love, wisdom, and maturity but by the size of one's pile of possessions. — Brennan Manning

Maturity is about ripeness, thoughtfulness, quality, balance, and wisdom. — Pearl Zhu

I have found that as your wisdom and maturity develop, the number of other people you blame for your own circumstances shrinks. — Steve Maraboli

A sign of wisdom and maturity is when you come to terms with the realization that your decisions cause your rewards and consequences. You are responsible for your life, and your ultimate success depends on the choices you make. — Denis Waitley

Wisdom does not depend on mind and memory but on the maturity, purity and perfection of the individual personality ... Therefore, insights are not passed on through the mind, but - and this particularly - through intuition or inspiration. The degree of wisdom is therefore determined by the state of development of the individual. — Franz Bardon

Young people, your parents, with their maturity of years and experience you have not had, can provide wisdom, knowledge, and blessings to help you over life's pitfalls. You may find, that life's sweetest experiences come when you go to Mom and Dad for help. — Ezra Taft Benson

When I Was One-And-Twenty

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true. — A.E. Housman

If we ask ourselves what is this wisdom which experience forces upon us, the answer must be that we discover the world is not constituted as we had supposed it to be. It is not that we learn more about its physical elements, or its geography, or the variety of its inhabitants, or the ways in which human society is governed. Knowledge of this sort can be taught to a child without in any way disturbing his childishness. In fact, all of us are aware that we once knew a great many things which we have since forgotten. The essential discovery of maturity has little if anything to do with information about the names, the locations, and the sequence of facts; it is the acquiring of a different sense of life, a different kind of intuition about the nature of things. — Walter Lippmann

Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. [ ... ] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. — Gene Roddenberry

You've climbed too many mountains and crossed too many rivers to stop and turn back now. — Eleanor Brownn

Good friends will allow you to be as innocent and free as a child when in private, and as wise and mature as an adult when in public. — Criss Jami

Not to grow up properly is to retain our 'caterpillar' quality from childhood (where it is a virtue) into adulthood (where it becomes a vice). In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our caterpillar nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists and quacks. The genius of the human child, mental caterpillar extraordinary, is for soaking up information and ideas, not for criticizing them. If critical faculties later grow it will be in spite of, not because of, the inclinations of childhood. The blotting paper of the child's brain is the unpromising seedbed, the base upon which later the sceptical attitude, like a struggling mustard plant, may possibly grow. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive scepticism of adult science. — Richard Dawkins

Maturity is a compound of wisdom, goodwill, resilience, and creativity. — J.I. Packer

When you realize that the real breakthroughs come from levels of higher consciousness, then you also realize that the achievement of maturity and wisdom is the most powerful generator of new beginnings possible. — Marianne Williamson

When people hear my daughter and when they know about her wisdom and maturity, they think that her father must have been sitting with her and mentoring her. They think he would have spent a lot of time in bringing her up. They think he would have constructed her. — Ziauddin Yousafzai

Fools despise wisdom and instruction" (Prov. 1:7), but it is the nature of true godliness, maturity, and health in church members to accept the loving instruction and rebuke of others. — Thabiti M. Anyabwile

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

Maturity understands that there's darkness in the world but that there's no need to dwell in it: we can lighten up and offer illumination to others. — Gina Barreca

Youth has its romance, and maturity its wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own season. — Charlotte Bronte

How displaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity. — Barbara Pym

Maturity and wisdom become us, when we appreciate people from our past. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

Quien sabe? Not me. The older I get the less I sabe, the less wisdom, maturity and caution I have. — William S. Burroughs

We become increasingly aware that the human dream, the human drama, with all its questionable, damaging, and often malevolent intention is not real life at all. — Donna Goddard

It takes great wisdom, maturity, and force of will to overcome ingrained human egotism and say
"Hey, I can fool myself! I might even be wrong, from time to time." — David Brin

A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not. — Lord Chesterfield

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

Through spiritual maturity you will see new ways to avoid unnecessary suffering; wiser ways to endure unavoidable hardships with grace, and opportunities to turn your pain into lessons of service and healing for others. — Bryant McGill

The vaunted experience of age was perhaps only a matter of wounds and scarring
that young minds to old minds might be as young bodies to old bodies: stronger, more vital, less twisted by damage. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I always wish for the same thing. a boyfriend, someone to love or love me. This year, I think I'm going to wish for something else. The wisdom and the maturity to realise that I won't find what I want by looking for it, not expect someone else to give me what I never gave myself, that I'm not a half, waiting to be made a whole, and even if that special person never comes along, I'll be just fine. — Ted Schmidt

At some point I hope to have grown sufficiently in both stature and wisdom to understand that I cannot deliver myself from myself, and that God alone can save me from me. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I have decided that I shan't sweat the small stuff. Sense and sensibility will, I assume, come in their own time. If indeed they ought to come. And in the meantime, I shall continue to work my ass off ... and whenever the opportunity arises ... dance my ass off ... As someone very smart once wrote, 'Those who were seen dancing were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music'. — Amy Mowafi

Changing your mind is okay. It shows wisdom and maturity. Never wavering from a belief no matter what is a mistake. What matters is trying to be as closely aligned with truth and reality as you can be at all times. And that requires many navigational adjustments over a lifetime. — Guy P. Harrison

India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion
and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age — Jawaharlal Nehru