Quotes about Personal Growth

If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I--I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.

So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!

Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as it's not yourself?

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I—I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Where once I'd felt the need to live up to his expectations, I now felt as if I had to make up for all his mistakes.

I recognized that in running for Congress I'd been driven not by some selfless dream of changing the world, but rather by the need to justify the choices I had already made, or to satisfy my ego, or to quell my envy of those who had achieved what I had not.

every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes

If I were to travel back in time, I might urge the young man I was to set the books aside for a minute, open the windows, and let in some fresh air (my smoking habit was then in full bloom). I'd tell him to relax, go meet some people, and enjoy the pleasures that life reserves for those in their twenties.

Strange how a single conversation can change you. Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect. A year passes and you know you feel differently, but you're not sure what or why or how, so your mind casts back for something that might give that difference shape: a word, a glance, a touch.

I wasn't great. My stump speech was stiff, heavy on policy speak, short on inspiration and humor. I also found it awkward to talk about myself. As an organizer, I'd been trained to always stay in the background.

Every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or live up to his mistakes.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." — Gospel of Thomas

If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.

We are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

I never learn anything from listening to myself.

Every family's its own trip to China.

Sophie's mother had to leave her dad, to get sober. She says as long as you're living with an addict, you're addicted.

I became determined to know a few steps more of that path every day.

Mother says I never practiced anything but always watched Leah, letting her make the mistakes for both of us, until I was ready to do it myself with acceptable precision. Mother is kind to me, probably because I've stayed nearer at hand than her other children. But I disagree. I made plenty of my own mistakes. I just made them on the inside.

We are the balance of our damage and our transgressions.

My firstborn and my baby both tried to shed me like a husk from the start, and the twins came with a fine interior sight with which they could simply look past me at everything more interesting.

a photojournalist. Eventually she had come to understand