Quotes about Maturity

"Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools."
-- George Chapman

"Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children."
-- Goethe

"Age does not make us childish, as some say; it only finds us true children still."
-- Goethe

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
-- J.D. Salinger

"As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities."
-- James A. Froude

"Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain."
-- John Dryden

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. In other words, I don't improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable."
-- John Steinbeck

"A boy becomes an adult three years before his parents think he does, and about two years after he thinks he does."
-- Lewis B Hershey

"In my case, adulthood itself was not an advance, although it was a useful waymark."
-- Nicholson Baker

"I am not young enough to know everything."
-- Oscar Wilde

"In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."
-- Oscar Wilde

"The young always have the same problem-- how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another."
-- Quentin Crisp

"I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates."
-- T. S. Eliot

"A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong."
-- Thomas Szasz