#Maturity

"When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree."

"Men must endureTheir going hence, even as their coming hither.Ripeness is all."

"When you mature in your relationship with God you realize how suffering and patience are like eating your spiritual vegetables."

"I called his broken promise heartbreaking, and he called it growing up. Oh, that’s mature—blame it on maturity."

"I’m 33, and an 18-year-old girl called me old. I said, “You may be temporarily young, but you’ll forever be childish.” Then I put gum in her hair."

"A little part of me dies every time I try to commit suicide. If life is a buffet, I’m still in the mac and cheese phase. Maybe one day I’ll mature into more of a meatloaf kind of guy."

"Caring - about people, about things, about life - is an act of maturity."

"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."

"I pet horses and ride cats, because I’m a cowman. I’m too mature to be a cowboy."

"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."

"He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas."

"I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us."

"Sometimes success will get in the way of maturity - at least temporarily."

"You are never too old to become younger!"

"Never mourn the loss of innocence, because it always brings the much greater gain of wisdom."

"When I lost her I gained the future, because she was my past, and she freed me to become who I was born to be."

"I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias."

"I will come back to you, I swear I will;And you will know me still.I shall be only a little tallerThan when I went."

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."