47 Quotes About Childhood and Adulthood

There are stark differences we experience in our life as we transition from childhood to adulthood. This journey is filled with many milestones and memories. These quotes about childhood and adulthood capture the nostalgia we may sometimes feel for passed times.

“A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.”

“Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.”

“As human beings, we all mature physically from childhood to adolescence and then into adulthood, but our emotions lag behind.”

“Being raised in an unstable household makes you understand that the world doesn’t exist to accommodate you, which… is something a lot of people struggle to understand well into their adulthood.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

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

“I had a wonderful childhood, which is tough because it’s hard to adjust to a miserable adulthood.”

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

“I spent my whole childhood wishing I were older and now I’m spending my adulthood wishing I were younger.”

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

“In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.”

“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.”

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

“Kids don’t shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.”

“Learning to code makes kids feel empowered, creative, and confident. If we want our young women to retain these traits into adulthood, a great option is to expose them to computer programming in their youth.”

“Life is truly a ride. We’re all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he’s ripping your ticket and away you go.”

“Many people don’t have relationships to their siblings in adulthood, or they have superficial ones. It’s sort of unfashionable, particularly in America, to be close to your family.”

“Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.”

“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.”

“Now that I’m feeling the responsibilities of adulthood, the choices we make become an incredible weight.”

“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.”

“One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.”

“Part of adulthood is searching for the people who understand you.”

“Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.”

“Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society – the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.”

“Singlehood is not longer a state to be overcome as soon as possible. It has its own rewards. Marriage is not the gateway to adulthood anymore. For most people it’s the dessert – desirable, but no longer the main course.”

“Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age.”

“The creative adult is the child who has survived.”

“The experience of being in between-between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination; between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood; between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith.”

“The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.”

“The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.”

“The powerlessness of the child is often forgotten. And after it comes the terrifying phase of moving into adulthood.”

“The tough thing about adulthood is it starts before you even know it starts.”

“True adulthood occurs the moment we grasp that the people who raised us do not exist solely for our comfort and reassurance. From that point on, the steady stream of unconditional love and support we’ve expected from them all our lives has to flow both ways.”

“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

“When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn’t feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors.”

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly.”

Different cultures look at the coming of age differently. Having an understanding as an individual transitions during this time helps to establish milestones.