Quotes about Personal Growth

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

I got to take classes in writing with a fountain pen, and actually, something you make is your own textbook. So, while you're learning about something, you have to write essays on it, and then you handwrite in cursive, in fountain pen, your essays out on beautiful paper and you bind it together into a book that you hand in at the end of the course.

I didn't live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don't know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

I am never writing a breakup record again, by the way. I'm done with being a bitter witch.

A mother to a reckless, feckless, one-off of a child—but what child isn't?

What a world I've come up through, said Liir to himself. Oh, what a world, what a world.

Well, I learned to cook. At my age, she told him. What's next? Art therapy? Anyway, I've had quite a time of it this summer, and who knows what eases down on any road. Come, Rain. A quick goodbye, and off you go. Goodbye, said Rain to the Lion, and then to the woman. Not to them, said Glinda, To me. She turned eyes that were saucerly upon Glinda. Mum?

Some people are born without much yeast in their dough.

A notion of character, not so much discredited as simply forgotten, once held that people only came into themselves partway through their lives.

Everybody needs to grow up and leave home sometimes. But sometimes home doesn't like it

Benjamin Franklin]identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate--temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility--and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.

I have an idea of who I wish I were, and that obscures my understanding of who I actually am. Sometimes I pretend even to myself to enjoy activities that I don't really enjoy, such as shopping, or to be interested in subjects that don't much interest me, such as foreign policy.

It's a Secret of Adulthood: I can't make people change, but when I change, others may change; and when others change, I may change.

I'd always vaguely expected to outgrown my limitations.

It's been freeing to focus on what works for me rather than what's wrong with me.

We are happy when we are growing.

Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens.

The happiest and most successful people are those who have figured out ways to exploit their Tendency to their benefit and, just as important, found ways to counterbalance its limitations.

I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasn't going to change unless I made it change.

For most of us, the real aim isn't to enjoy a few pleasures right now, but to build habits that will make us happy over the long term. Sometimes, that means giving up something in the present, or demanding more from ourselves.

To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

Happiness," wrote Yeats, "is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

I should tailor my habits to the fundamental aspects of my nature that aren't going to change. It was no use saying "I'll write more every day if I team up with another writer, and we race to see who can finish writing a book faster," because I don't like competition.