Quotes About Maturity

I'm exploring the maturity, the wisdom that just comes from having gone around the sun 50 times. My experience is, 'Oh, I'm never really going to get it right. I'm never going to get it done. But that's not the point here.' The point is the journey.

It takes a while to establish a character. Richard Boone once told me he didn't really get the character in 'Have Gun - Will Travel' until the 16th show. You just plant a seed, water it, let the sun shine on it, and hope it blooms.

When a grown man reaches forty, we change him for an old one. He has completely disappeared. There's only the most superficial resemblance between the two of them. Nothing is handed on from one to the other.

Oh hours of childhood, when behind each shape more than the past appeared and what streamed out before us was not the future. We felt our bodies growing and were at times impatient to be grown up, half for the sake of those with nothing left but their grownupness.

with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good.

Not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree.

Let your judgements have their own quiet, undisturbed development, which must, like all progress, come from deep within, and cannot in any way be pressed or hurried.

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!

Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are greater yet. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but also why it will not cease to grow.

Love at first has nothing to do with unfolding, abandon and uniting with another person (for what would be the sense in a union of what is unrefined and unfinished, still second order?); for the individual it is a grand opportunity to mature, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world in himself for another's sake; it is a great immoderate demand made upon the self, something that singles him out and summons him to vast designs.

This isn't how sickness was in childhood. A postponement. An excuse to grow up.

The world of sexuality it finds is not entirely mature and pure, it is not human enough, only virile, rut, intoxication, restlessness, and weighed down by the old prejudices and arrogance with which men have disfigured and overburdened love.

But alas, with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good. For poems are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough—they are experiences.

There is no measuring with time, not even a year matters, and ten years are nothing. To be an artist means: to neither reckon nor count; to ripen like the tree, which does not rush its sap, and stands firm in the storms of spring, without anxiety that summer may not come after. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there, as if eternity lay before them, so carelessly silent and vast. I learn it daily, learn it with pain, am grateful for it: Patience is all!

There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer.

Learning-time is always a long, secluded time..

Me pregunto si estoy lo suficientemente sereno y maduro como para iniciar el diario que te quiero llevar de vuelta a casa...

They wished to flower, and flowering is being beautiful: but we wish to ripen, and that means being dark and taking pains.

As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath- no: as one presses it against a wound out of which the whole of life, in a single gush, wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you turn red from me. How could anyone express what took place between us? We made up for everything there was never time for. I matured strangely in every impulse of unperformed youth, and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart…

To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow.

Geben Sie jedes Mal sich und Ihrem Gefühl recht, (...) sollten Sie doch unrecht haben, so wird das natürliche Wachstum Ihres inneren Lebens Sie langsam und mit der Zeit zu anderen Erkenntnissen führen. Lassen Sie Ihren Urteilen die eigene stille, ungestörte Entwicklung, die, wie jeder Fortschritt, tief aus innen kommen muss und durch nichts gedrängt oder beschleunigt werden kann.

And he'll learn that his index and second fingers are meant for something other than playing the game of stink-finger and pulling his bow.

Be your own father, young man

The years teach much the days never know.