45 Quotes About Growing Up and Maturing

From personal experiences to the ponderings of many external questions in life, growing up is not easy for many. Here are some great quotes about growing up and maturing that are encouraging.

“A person’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.”

“Age is just a number. Maturity is a choice.”

“Age is no guarantee of maturity.”

“Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.”

“Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.”

“Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”

“Even though you’re growing up, you should never stop having fun.”

“Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you’re young. But I don’t think we make any fewer when we’re grown up.”

“Everything I was afraid of when I was growing up, I’ve become. I’ve taken on my nightmares, like the devil and the end of the world, and I’ve become those things.”

“For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.”

“Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.”

“Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you’re in diapers; the next day you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul.”

“Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.”

“Growing up is hard, love. Otherwise everyone would do it.”

“Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience and pimples.”

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up…We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old.”

“I believe the sign of maturity is accepting deferred gratification.”

“I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you’re not the center of the universe.”

“I had a lot of growing up to do. A lot of times, I learned the hard way.”

“I know that in my past I was young and irresponsible – but that’s what growing up is. You learn from your mistakes.”

“I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.”

“I think, as you’re growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you’re an adult. You’re ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don’t feel things more as we get older.”

“I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.”

“If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again.”

“If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!”

“If your gonna screw up, do it while you’re young. Older you get, the harder it is to bounce back.”

“In this day and age, some turn 18 and think they’re a man or a woman and that’s it, but that’s just not true. You have to establish your manhood or your womanhood with actions.”

“It happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you’ve known forever don’t see things the way you do. So you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.”

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

“Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.”

“Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values.”

“Maturity is that time when the mirrors in our mind turn to windows and instead of seeing the reflection of ourselves we see others.”

“Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.”

“No matter where you are or where you grow up, you always go through the same awkward moments of being a teenager and growing up and trying to figure out who you are.”

“One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.”

“Part of growing up is just taking what you learn from that and moving on and not taking it to heart.”

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

“Sometimes we’re so concerned about giving our children what we never had growing up, we neglect to give them what we did have growing up.”

“The trick is growing up without growing old.”

“The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.”

“To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.”

“Until you’re grown-up they send you to reform school. After you’re grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.”

“We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.”

“You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.”

“Youth condemns; maturity condones.”

Trying to grow up and make the transition into adulthood is not easy for everyone.