Quotes about Personal Growth

To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's life. It is no less than a denial of the soul

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

Nature has come to a point where now, unless you take individual responsibility, you cannot grow.

Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn't know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.

No one is born either naturally or supernaturally with character; it must be developed.

Every action alters the soul of the doer.

I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a 'learning experience.' Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a 'learning experience.' It makes me feel less stupid.

Life is a competition, but it is not a race against anyone else. The real journey is against yourself and the true victory is being able to maintain your humanity.

Every woman has a record of her body—a closet full of jeans and bras of various sizes, albums full of photographs revealing periods of weight gain and loss.

It's not like I can change any of it now. I can only use the experience to avoid such situations in the future.

Create a story of which you will be proud.

We cannot change who we are. Sooner or later we will all have to face ourselves.

book ends with the protagonist having the same problem

Letting children "live their lives" isn't about releasing them into the wild or abandoning them (though French school trips do feel a bit like that to me). It's about acknowledging that children aren't repositories for their parents' ambitions or projects for their parents to perfect. They are separate and capable, with their own tastes, pleasures, and experiences of the world. They even have their own secrets.

When couples come together, it's for big reasons. Sometimes more than they believe. And the person who is right for you is exactly the one that makes you become who heaven intended you to be.

Books are a pleasure and they anchor your greater values.

Most of us fear that in growing old, we'll become a shell of ourselves. But, of course, it's the youthful versions of ourselves that are our shells; we must leave them behind like a snakeskin. We must grow out of ourselves to grow beyond our old limits, or else risk being suffocated by the sediment of our own history.

Before was preparation: leaving home, going to college, launching a career, getting married, having a child, realizing that love might be forever but life was not. After was living with the choices I'd made: that man, that child, that profession, that city, that self.

The day you turn thirty is a big deal; it's when you're really starting to come into your own. If you were a rose, you would be just starting to open up and show all your layers of petals.

when you step out of your box you gain a deeper understanding of yourself!

I'm not the same person I was. I used to act dumb. It was an act. I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me. I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that.

First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader. Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher's voice

The attempt to live by the reality of our own nature, which means our limits as well as our potentials, is a profoundly moral regimen.