Quotes About Development

That is one of the advantagers of being thirteen. You know so much more than you did when you were only twelve

I'm sure no life can be properly developed and rounded out without some trial and sorrow - though I suppose it is only when we are pretty comfortable that we admit it.

If at thirteen you can write ten good lines, at twenty you'll write ten times ten-if the gods are kind. I think there's something trying to speak through you- but you'll have to make yourself a fit instrument for it.

Just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the world.

Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.

Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves.

He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it

Unsere Zivilisation ist durch das Wort Fortschritt charakterisiert. Der Fortschritt ist ihre Form nicht eine ihrer Eigenschaften daß sie fortschrietet. Sie ist typisch aufbauend. Ihre Tätigkeit ist es ein immer komplizierteres Gebilde zu konstruieren. Und auch die Klarheit dient doch nur wieder diesem Zweck und ist nicht Selbstzweck. Mir dagegen ist die Klarheit, die Durchsichtigkeit, Selbstzweck.

Ma, perdiana!, la Natura ha faticato migliaja, migliaja e migliaja di secoli per salire questi cinque gradini, dal verme all'uomo; s'è dovuta evolvere, è vero? questa materia per raggiungere come forma e come sostanza questo quinto gradino, per diventare questa bestia che ruba, questa bestia che uccide, questa bestia bugiarda, ma che è pure capace di scrivere la Divina Commedia […].

Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. A full life will be full of pain.

The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.

When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

In any case, when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck. And without healing, the human spirit begins to shrivel.

The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.

Self-discipline is a self-enlarging process.

Being about spiritual growth, this book is inevitably about the other side of the same coin: the impediments to spiritual growth. Ultimately there is only the one impediment, and that is laziness. If we overcome laziness, all the other impediments will be overcome. If we do not overcome laziness, none of the others will be hurdled.

In any case, when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.

The will to grow is in essence the same phenomenon as love. Love is the will to extend oneself for spiritual growth. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.

But the biggest problem of map-making is not that we have to start from scratch, but that if our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them.

The only true end of love is spiritual growth or human evolution.

Why is this? Why do a majority develop a capacity to delay gratification while a substantial minority fail, often irretrievably, to develop this capacity? The answer is not absolutely, scientifically known. The role of genetic factors is unclear. The variables cannot be sufficiently controlled for scientific proof. But most of the signs rather clearly point to the quality of parenting as the determinant.

But most of the signs rather clearly point to the quality of parenting as the determinant.

Transference is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment (indeed, often life-saving) but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment.

Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people.