Quotes about maturity

A collection of quotes on the topic of children, parent, childhood, adulthood.

Best quotes about maturity

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo

“Childhood is for spoiling adulthood.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

08 Jul 92
Source: The Days Are Just Packed

Nélson Rodrigues photo

“Adulthood does not exist. Man is an eternal child.”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

Flor de Obsessão: as 1000 melhores frases de Nelson Rodrigues.

Quotes about maturity

José Baroja photo
Fran Lebowitz photo

“I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?”

Fran Lebowitz (1950) author and public speaker from the United States

"Words Are Easy, Books Are Not," interview with Bob Morris, The New York Times (1994-08-10), Late Edition, Section C, page 1, column 1.

Carol Gilligan photo
John Rogers photo

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

John Rogers writer, comedian and producer from the United States

In an "Ephemera" blog post http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html
This also appears in Ch. 10 of The Value of Nothing (2010) by Raj Patel, who later acknowledged it was a borrowed joke in "Citation Alert!" http://rajpatel.org/2010/01/21/citation-alert/ (21 January 2010) at rajpatel.org.

Joe Hill photo

“The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

“Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God.”

Scott Dikkers (1965) American comic writer

Source: You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

Gail Carson Levine photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Meg Cabot photo
Cynthia Leitich Smith photo
Jim Henson photo

“As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=IiKY1H0A_QEC&pg=PT102 (Hyperion, 2005).
Cf. Wisdom from It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=EEiqMIgAl3UC&pg=PA49 (White Plains, N. Y.: Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 2007), p. 49.

David Sedaris photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Gene Wolfe photo

“The true dawn of adulthood, of intellectual maturity, if you like, is the realization that adults are all fools.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"The Pirates of Florida and Other Impossibilities", speech at the Conference on the Fantastic (1991), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Stephen King photo
P. D. James photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Mark Hawthorne (author) photo
Derren Brown photo
Germaine Greer photo

“The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Chapter 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=7MGFAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+management+of+fertility+is+one+of+the+most+important%22+%22of+adulthood%22&pg=PA40#v=onepage
Sex and Destiny : The Politics of Human Fertility (1984)

Robert Charles Wilson photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
Mark Ames photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Anu Partanen photo
Laura Dern photo
Dylan Moran photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
Alan Hirsch photo

“Currently, young Christians reach adulthood bored with church experience, and with little or no sense of their calling as missionaries.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 119

Michael Chabon photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Camille Paglia photo
Gene Wolfe photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Adulthood isn’t an award they’ll give you for being a good child.”

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)
Context: Adulthood isn’t an award they’ll give you for being a good child. You can waste … years, trying to get someone to give that sort of respect to you, as though it were some sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just … take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, "I’m sorry you feel like that", and walk away.

“These days adolescence stretches much further into adulthood than it used to. There's no longer any encouragement to be mature.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

As quoted in Elevator Music (1994) by Joseph Lanza
Context: I began to become an adult when I was 24 and got married and had children. That matures you, but I wouldn't say I was fully an adult until I was in my forties. The trouble with the whole adult debate is that if you're asking 18-year-olds to go out and fight wars for you then you can't deny them adult rights even though in sorts of other ways they wouldn't qualify until they were about 25. These days adolescence stretches much further into adulthood than it used to. There's no longer any encouragement to be mature.

Neil Strauss photo

“A man has two primary drives in early adulthood: one toward power, success, and accomplishment; the other toward love, companionship, and sex.”

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (2005)
Context: A man has two primary drives in early adulthood: one toward power, success, and accomplishment; the other toward love, companionship, and sex. Half of life then was out of order. To go before them was to stand up as a man and admit that I was only half a man.

Hanya Yanagihara photo
Awkwafina photo

“There is a duality between Awkwafina and Nora. Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school – who did not give a shit. Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers.”

Awkwafina (1988) actress and rapper from New York

On how her alter ego helps her cope with adulthood in “Awkwafina: ‘I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I’d do anything for a laugh’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/17/awkwafina-oceans-8-youtube-crazy-funny-nora-lum in The Guardian (2018 Jun 17)

Pete Buttigieg photo
James K. Morrow photo
William Blum photo

“To the mind carefully brought to adulthood in the United States, the truths of anticommunism are self-evident, as self-evident as the flatness of the world once was to an earlier mind...”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

Vera Stanley Alder photo

“We will endeavour to produce a guide book to progress for those of us who accept this new challenge of adulthood... we will outline the picture of past and present trends of human development.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII

Vera Stanley Alder photo

“Adulthood essentially means making the right choices based on true love.”

Joseph Theodorus Suwatan (1940) Indonesian Roman Catholic bishop

Nuncio Asks Catholic Schools to Instill Value of Love https://www.ucanews.com/story-archive/?post_name=/2002/04/30/nuncio-asks-catholic-schools-to-instill-value-of-love&post_id=20552 (29 April 2002)