Self Maturity Quotes & Sayings

It didn't matter what anyone else saw in me. For the first time, I felt like I was seeing myself. — Lisa Brown Roberts

By putting the spotlight on the female child and framing her as the ideal of beauty, he condemns the mature woman to invisibility. In fact, the modern Western man enforces Immanuel Kant's nineteenth-century theories: To be beautiful, women have to appear childish and brainless. When a woman looks mature and self-assertive, or allows her hips to expand, she is condemned ugly. Thus, the walls of the European harem separate youthful beauty from ugly maturity. — Fatema Mernissi

With endless pharmacological supplies at our fingertips, we do not need to penetrate the motives behind our actions, feelings, transgressions, dreams, and phobias. High on chemical substances we can remain stagnated in an infantile mental state. Without introspection, we foreclose ourselves from gaining the insight that allows us to navigate adulthood's ceaseless demands. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Sometimes when we read the words of those who have been more than conquerors, we feel almost despondent. I feel that I shall never be like that. But they won through step by step, by little bits of wills, little denials of self, little inward victories, by faithfulness in very little things. They became what they are. No one sees these little hidden steps. They only see the accomplishment, but even so, those small steps were taken. There is no sudden triumph, no spiritual maturity. That is the work of the moment. — Amy Carmichael

Don't restrain yourself to mundaneness. You're subject to consciousness that makes you more than animalistic. — T.F. Hodge

Lincoln himself once said, "The worst things you can do for those you love are the things they could and should do for themselves." He fiercely believed in self-sufficiency, and in the maturity and character that struggles and hardships can bring. — John Wooden

The Warrior archetype is hard-wired into our brain structure. Socialization means repression, which only keeps aggressiveness in an all the more volatile, compressed, and explosive form. But aggression is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. In many ways legitimate aggression contributes vitally to our lives. In aggression we find our drives for life, career, social contact, self-definition, and service. Perseverance and fidelity are products of the Warriors determination. Though the Lover initiates a relationship, it is the Warrior who maintains it-without the Warrior the Lover is merely promiscuous. The answer then is not to banish any of the archetypes, but to work on achieving the maturity necessary to manage them. — Douglas Gillette

Judging a person's maturity by the number of years they've lived is misleading. This is because people mature at different rates. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

If broken lives and souls are to be healed, it must begin with teaching the practice of the presence ... To abide in the presence of the Lord is to begin to hear Him. To follow through on that hearing is to find healing, self-acceptance, and growth into psychological and spiritual balance and maturity. — Leanne Payne

The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church - a valuable goal. In actuality, however; it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers whose students never graduate. — Christian Smith

Individualism is the growth-stunting, maturity-inhibiting habit of understanding growth as an isolated self-project. Individualism is self-ism with a swagger. The individualist is the person who is convinced that he or she can serve God without dealing with God. — Eugene H. Peterson

Is it not a sign of immaturity to wish for someone's downfall? To wish that he or she fails at whatever productive endeavours they are aiming at? Wishing to be the only one succeeding, while everyone else fails?
It's a world where we are all dependent on one another, one way or the other; and trade is happening at a much more sophisticated level than ever before. It is to our collective benefit for people to succeed. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

For despite his confidence, and his apparent maturity, I suspected that there was in him a deep and childish need to elevate, and idealize, the love object. This is not uncommon in artists. The very nature of their work, the long periods of isolation followed by public self-display, and the associated risk of rejection all conspire to create unnaturally intense relationships with their sexual partners. Then, when disillusion occurs, as of course it must, the sense of betrayal is profound ... — Patrick McGrath

I had over-trained. I put too much pressure on myself because I wanted that gold medal too much. If I had trained 15 per cent less, I would have won. I was training like a crazy person. There was a lack of self-confidence and a lack of maturity. An athlete does not only train with his body. He trains with his mind. — Hicham El Guerrouj

All her years of maturity had been devoted either to distorting or side-stepping the less agreeable facts motivating her self-indulgent conduct. — Thorne Smith

I am convinced that in the present time, in spite of the difficulties man has to meet another in a state of oblation, communion and gift of self, there are latent hidden forces in him which can be awakened in order to enable him to discover and live this reality of love and fidelity. In order to really penetrate into this mystery of the union of the couple, it is essential that each one acquire an interior maturity, a maturity that is perhaps rare. I would add that in order to be truly united and to remain truly faithful to one another, the couple must listen and be open to the Spirit of God who has reserved for Himself the science of the heart. The heart of man is satisfied only by the Infinite and to discover this Infinite in union he must open himself to the Spirit of God, a spirit of giving, of receiving. The union between the two spouses can thus deepen to such an extent that they enter in a mystical manner into the very life of God Himself. — Jean Vanier

Meredith was not so secure in her maturity that she did not suffer those periods of despondency and doubt which seemed to weave through the lives of self-reliant women. — Don DeLillo

Change takes time. It takes time for the seeds to begin growing within, time to understand and process, time for the growth to mature, and time for the old self to die and fall away. — Bryant McGill

Wish" gives the warmth, the content, the imagination, the child's play, the freshness, and the richness to "will." "Will" gives the self-direction, the maturity, to "wish." Without "wish," "will" loses its life-blood, its
viability, and tends to expire in self-contradiction. If you have only "will" and no "wish," you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan man. If you have only "wish" and no "will," you have the driven, unfree, infantile person who, as an adult-remaining-an-infant, may become the robot man.66 — Irvin D. Yalom

Maturity colonizes your adolescent mind, like an ultraviolet photograph of a vast cosmic nebula that turns out, on closer examination, to be a pointillist self-portrait. — Elan Mastai

Today you are encouraged to accept your failures. When you are willing to fail miserably, you are able to achieve greatly. Admitting your mistakes and weaknesses doesn't diminish your strength, it shows your courage and maturity. Sometimes you just need to be quiet, swallow your pride and accept you were wrong. It's not about giving up, it's about growing up. — John Geiger

Revolution was the great nightmare of eighteenth-century British society, and when first the American Revolution of 1776, then the French Revolution of 1789 overturned the accepted order, the United Kingdom exercised all its power so that revolution would not damage its own hardwon security and growing prosperity. Eighteenth-century writing is full of pride in England as the land of liberty (far ahead of France, the great rival, in political maturity), and saw a corresponding growth in national self-confidence accompanying the expansion of empire. — Ronald Carter

To me, growing into spiritual maturity is becoming less self-conscious and more God-conscious. — Mark Batterson

Being a reader has brought me much joy, laughter, and rich experience. But reading has also wounded me. The sacrament of reading has plowed me open and sown seeds of empathy that have taken root in deep soil. Over the years, reading has caused me to grow from a shallow, self-absorbed youth to one who seeks out the pain of the world. Reading has burdened me with the welfare of my fellow human, but sometimes the burden proves too heavy for my narrow shoulders. — Steve Kendall

Through developing trusting and respectful relationships with the boys in our lives, we can help boys to value and acknowledge their relational capabilities, which they may otherwise learn to discount or overlook. We can also offer and model for them definitions of maturity, masculinity, health and success that will enable them to remain grounded in their self-knowledge (e.g. as they encounter societal pressures to conform to group and cultural norms), and to form relationships that will sustain rather than constrain them. — Judy Chu

A patient willingness to defer dividends is a hallmark of individual maturity. — Neil A. Maxwell

It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of high maturity, to rise to the level of self-criticism. — Martin Luther King Jr.

It is us who change. We grow stronger, and the problems appear less imposing. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up. — John C. Maxwell

In my deepest contacts with individuals in therapy, even those whose troubles are most disturbing, whose behavior has been most anti-social, whose feelings seem most abnormal, I find this to be true. When I can sensitively understand the feelings which they are expressing, when I am able to accept them as separate persons in their own right, then I find that they tend to move in certain directions. And what are these directions in which they tend to move? The words which I believe are most truly descriptive are words such as positive, constructive, moving toward self-actualization, growing toward maturity, growing toward socialization. — Carl R. Rogers

Only Yeong-hye, docile and naive, had been unable to deflect their father's temper or put up any form of resistance. Instead, she had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, In-hye could see that the role that she had adopted back then of the hard-working, self-sacrificing eldest daughter had been a sign not of maturity but of cowardice. It had been a survival tactic. — Han Kang

When a boy ... discovers that he is more given into introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather, it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness. Because such consciousness was simply a steppingstone to aberration and my present thinking was nothing but uncertain and haphazard guesswork. — Yukio Mishima

Whereas the Odyssey represents the maturity of the moral consciousness of a whole people, Huckleberry Finn shows only its beginnings in the mind of a child. And with a self-protective dexterity that would not have surprised Mark Twain in the least, the adult racist mentality of America has dealt with the threat of that beginning by decreeing that Huckleberry Finn is not a book for the chastening of adults, which to a large extent it certainly is, but a book for the entertainment of children. — Wendell Berry

People say you're born innocent, but it's not true. You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about. You inherit your identity, your history, like a birthmark that you can't wash off ... We are born with our heads turned back, but my mother says we have to face into the future now. You have to earn your own innocence, she says. You have to grow up and become innocent. — Hugo Hamilton

At thirty a man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same. — Edward Young

The good don't masquerade their goodness, they just are. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

We have a choice in our response to failure. We can condemn or we can learn. All of us fail, but this doesn't mean that we are failures. We need to understand that failing can be a step toward maturity, not a permanent blot on our self-esteem...We don't have to allow failure to prevent us from being used by God. — Robert S. McGee

A woman stood in front of her with the peculiar poise that comes before the discovery of age and after the loss of innocence. — Donald Kingsbury

At thirty a man steps out of the darkness and wasteland of preparation into active life it is the time to show oneself, the time of fulfillment. — Thomas Mann

A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that he other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them. — David Foster Wallace

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control. — Alain De Botton

Your thoughts will make you a victor or a victim. — Rob Liano

A human being, in order to function fully and effectively in this world, needs to develop in himself all four of these tools of maturity: 1) physical energy and bodily self-control; 2) emotional calmness and expansive feeling; 3) dynamic, persistent will power; and 4) a clear-sighted, practical intellect. Remove any one of these aspects from the equation and the equation itself becomes distorted. Each aspect depends for its perfection on the other three ... These tools are best developed in sequence: bodily awareness first, then sensitivity of feeling, then will power, and last of all, intellect. — Swami Kriyananda

Real progress in the Christian life is not gauged by our knowledge of scripture, our church attendance, time in prayer, or even our witnessing (although it isn't less than these things) Maturity in the Christian life is measured by only one test: how much closer to his character have we become? the result of the Spirit's work is more not more activity. No, the results of his work are in in our quality of life, they are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

We are currently too attached to our worldly toys, rather than to the lessons our playing could impart to further the maturity of our collective soul. — Ilchi Lee

The mind wants to land, to fixate, to hold a concept, but the only way you can be really free is by not fixating. That's part of true maturity, and it's one of the hardest things for spiritual people who have had true and powerful revelations to go through - to accept the degree of surrender needed to literally let go of all experience and all self-reference. Even in great revelations, there is almost always something that wants to claim, "I am this." Every time you claim, "I am this", you just claimed another sense perception, thought, emotion, or feeling. — Adyashanti

Through solving problems we improve and develop ourselves, reach maturity and strengthen our will — Sunday Adelaja

Historical consciousness therefore leaves you, as does maturity itself, with a simultaneous sense of your own significance and insignificance. Like Friedrich's wanderer, you dominate a landscape even as you're diminished by it. You're suspended between sensibilities that are at odds with one another, but it's precisely within that suspension that your own identity
whether as a person or a historian
tends to reside. Self-doubt must always precede self-confidence. It should never, however, cease to accompany, challenge, and by these means discipline self-confidence. — John Lewis Gaddis

It is widely unknown, but nonetheless true that Catholicism fervently promotes the 'spiritual disciplines' whereas Protestantism has largely neglected them altogether. Does 'volunteerism' facilitate the formation of Christ's character in us or rather does it reveal our level of Christ-like maturity through the work of the Holy Spirit in us? Jesus modeled son-ship and gave all of His time, shared his talents,and invested all of His treasure while affirming others as He proclaimed through demonstrations the Kingdom of God.'Christ-likeness cannot be self-efforted' (Woods, 2007)."


~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

What passes for education, culture or maturity in most minds is merely how individuals want to think of themselves, a contrived egocentric self-concept, not actual and effective principles and values. This is what is known in the cliche as the "veneer" of civilization. — Kenny Smith

But no matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reckoned with. Only a fool is interested in other people's guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question he will look into his own heart. — C. G. Jung

I'm almost 50, so I obviously don't have the same body that I had when I was 20. But I also don't have the same mindset either, when I was wracked with self-consciousness and insecurity. Now I really appreciate my maturity as a woman, my depth of spirit and soul and my understanding of who I am and what's important to me. — Elle Macpherson

Running away, avoiding life's battles or giving up robs you of the opportunity to grow and be stronger. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Then science came along and taught us that we are not the measure of all things, that there are wonders unimagined, that the Universe is not obliged to conform to what we consider comfortable or plausible. We have learned something about the idiosyncratic nature of our common sense. Science has carried human self-consciousness to a higher level. This is surely a rite of passage, a step towards maturity. — Carl Sagan

Maturity is the ability to sort the portions of truth from the accepted lies and self-deceptions that you have grown up with. — Alexei Panshin

Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in under or over-protectiveness, in a distrust in parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity - a flexible concept - be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first. — Jim Thompson

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends? — Botkin

(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self. — David Brooks

Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others' reasons for action, or the basis of others' emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers. — Terri E Apter

I have noticed that people tend to stop maturing when they start self-medicating. Everyone has very tough seasons of life, but by persevering through them we have an opportunity to mature and grow as people. Those who self-medicate ... often thwart maturity as they escape the tough seasons of life rather than face them. — Mark Driscoll

The narrator finds that as a maturing character grows in stature before her friends that she sees less stature while evaluating herself. — Zane Grey

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

It is not the time that a person has lived that determines maturity, but what he does during that time. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought. Self-expression is never an issue, for, wittingly or unwittingly, all stories, honest and dishonest, wise and foolish, faithfully mirror their maker, exposing his humanity ... or lack of it. — Robert McKee

Age 50 is the mile marker where any mildly perceptive person becomes acutely aware that he or she alone is accountable for the content and coherence of their character. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Here's one of my favorite statements: We are never going to enjoy stability, we are never going to enjoy spiritual maturity until we learn how to do what's right when it feels wrong, and every time you do what's right by a decision of your will using discipline and self control to go beyond how you feel, the more painful it is in your flesh, the more you're growing spiritually at that particular moment. — Joyce Meyer

The only relationships that exist are based on truth. Everything else is just a mutual and isolating delusion. — Stefan Molyneux

In Christ we see a maturity of love that flowers in self-sacrifice and forgiveness; a maturity of power that never swerves from the ideal of service; a maturity of goodness that overcomes every temptation, and, of course, we see the ultimate victory of life over death itself. — Vincent Nichols

In our formative years, every person begins creating a self that can keep him or her company through later stages in life. It requires concentrated effort to create self-hood. The task of creating a fully developed human being is an ongoing process, an open-ended assignment. The goal of self-hood is to evade slipping into a state of thoughtlessness, where we fail to take ownership of our thoughts, deeds, and lifestyle. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Every jump of technical progress leaves the relative intellectual development of the masses a step behind, and thus causes a fall in the political-maturity thermometer. It takes sometimes tens of years, sometimes generations, for a people's level of understanding gradually to adapt itself to the changed state of affairs, until it has recovered the same capacity for self-government as it had already possessed at a lower stage of civilization. — Arthur Koestler

Maturity has much to do with self-discovery and exploration of self, but I think for those of us who have lived through and emerged out the other side of addictions, the need and desire to understand ourselves is particularly strong. As a regular and heavy drinker, I thought I was outgoing, flirtatious, bubbly, a little bit of a daredevil, something of a maverick. — Lucy Rocca

...The happy Warrior... 'tis, finally, the man, who, lifted high, conspicuous object in a nation's eye, or left unthought-of in obscurity,- who, with a toward or untoward lot, prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not- plays, in the many games of life, that one where what he most doth value must be won: whom neither shape or danger can dismay, nor thought of tender happiness betray; who, not content that former worth stand fast, looks forward, persevering to the last, from well to better, daily self-surpast: who, whether praise of him must walk the earth for ever, and to noble deeds give birth, or he must fall, to sleep without his fame, and leave a dead unprofitable name- finds comfort in himself and in his cause; and, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws his breath in confidence of Heaven's applause: this is the happy Warrior; this is he that every man in arms should wish to be. — William Wordsworth

When you are criticised don't ignore it, but don't get overpowered by it, and certainly there is no need to be defensive about it. Rather, wait for a while and then weigh up its merits and demerits, balance it out and chart out your approaches and actions to improve. That is the right way to handle criticism, as it demonstrate your emotional maturity and will enhance your self confidence. — Vishwas Chavan

To fully understand how utterly amazing we really are we must first understand all of the things about us that are not, and then we must make our habitation where they are not. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

There's a difference, you know, between faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow. The other one will make you sleep. — Rich Mullins