Quotes About Maturity

Mr Blyth, you should remember one thing. A celibate island life fighting Turks is no particular guarantee of early maturity. Take a little crone-like advice, and don't rush your judgements.

A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom.

I have been taught to face reality: an excellent thing.

Like King Lewis of Hungary, who was immaturely born, came of age too soon and was immaturely married, my age is out of joint with my phenomenal destiny.

And for Adam Blacklock the artist, older, wiser, and perhaps less vulnerable than once he had been, a chance to assess from maturity a person whose maturity was and always had been a thing disconcerting to witness. For what, after these violent years, would entertain or even interest Francis Crawford, Blacklock found he had no idea.

The child, level with the kneeling man, had moved nearer, his eyes wide, his face uplifted as if to embrace him. Before he could touch him, Lymond rose, and, looking down, smiled. 'Keep thy kisses. Thou art almost a man; and a man chooses to kiss only the persons he loves. Then thy kiss will be a big gift indeed.

He had admitted her to the sexless friendship she had asked of him. She had been treated at last as a partner and adult. She was free, as he had said, to join her invention to his; to expect and give co-operation without fear or favour, as might be done by Adam or Jerott or Danny.

You are offered love and won't accept it except on your own terms. That isn't tragic. It's the word you've just mentioned—it's childish.

How old do you think he is?' said Sybilla placidly. 'To tell you the truth, I don't want him hanging about my petticoats for the rest of my life. He is, you must admit, a little disruptive in the home.

For you are a leader—don't you know it? I don't, surely, need to tell you?—And that is what leadership means. It means fortifying the fainthearted and giving them the two sides of your tongue while you are at it. It means suffering weak love and schooling it till it matures. It means giving up your privacies, your follies and your leisure. It means you can love nothing and no one too much, or you are no longer a leader, you are the led.

I have given you nothing. I have shown you what was there in you already, and you have been man enough to destroy what is weak and to foster what is strong until it is unassailable.

He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): Surely it is possible to love with the head as well as the heart. Mr. Delagardie had replied, somewhat drily: No doubt; so long as you do not end by thinking with your entrails instead of your brain.

May I express the hope that the present union may happily exemplify that which we find in a first-class port—strength of body fortified by a first-class spirit and mellowing through many years to a noble maturity. My lord and my lady—your very good health!

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes.

It seemed that the lust to power was a thing one grew out of. What one wanted, she thought ... was peace, and freedom from the pressure of angry and agitated personalities.

Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave

Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.

Thirty seconds into the conversation, and already he'd blown it. Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.

You know we got two lives, sometimes more. I don't mean like reincarnation, I mean like we have our life of innocence and then it rams right into the real life. The life where innocence is just a mirror—looks nice, reflects a lot, but it ain't the real thing. I

I don't see why being smart and grown up has anything to do with abandoning the things you believed in when you were a kid.

I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.

Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic.

Our conversations are never easy, but as I-we-get older, we are finding that our conversations must bespoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic. It is as though the coolness that marked out youth is itself a type of retrovirus that can only leave you feeling empty. Full of holes.

I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.