Maturation Quotes

It takes a well-spent lifetime, and perhaps more, to crystalize in us that for which we exist.

~ Jean Toomer

Faith is the most unexercised muscle known to man.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The topics we learn from our four core subjects during our childhood and adolescent stage of our lives help us to understand the norms of common knowledge and take pride of our citizenship.

~ Saaif Alam

If something traumatizes you, please do not think that your life is coming to an end. You will still have opportunities to resume with your life by speaking up and seeking for assistance.

~ Saaif Alam

When you are preoccupied with a disturbing thought or feeling that is considered irrational and waste of time, you will reduce your time enjoying the pleasure of your life. The strategy to overcome your mental shortcomings is to participate in outdoor activities and socialize with others who have emphatic understanding about your feelings and thoughts.

~ Saaif Alam

She was torn between her customer service training and her youthful certitude.

~ Bill Bryson

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, tuned the English tongue.

~ Harold Bloom

The author said Frederick Douglass described himself as a graduate of slavery with the marks of his diploma on his back.

~ Harold Holzer

They ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances.

~ Charles Dickens

A letter Lewis wrote reveals an 18-year-old with the energy of a schoolboy and the tastes of an octogenarian.

~ Philip Zaleski

Oxford in the Inklings' day was not so different in look and smell from the Oxford of today. Then, as now, one was tempted to fantasize one's surroundings as a Camelot of intellectual knight-errantry or an Eden of serene contemplation. Then, as now, there was bound to be disappointment.

~ Philip Zaleski

She was too well-trained to panic.

~ Steve Sheinkin

The Mother Thing makes our world.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

More depended on the student than on the school.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

College was at the heart of his sentimental imagination.

~ Rick Perlstein

One of George H. W. Bush's early teachers at Andover wrote, At the moment he is intellectually immature for his powers of reasoning are not entirely developed.

~ H.w. Brands

Resilience is rooted in habits we can cultivate and change.

~ Andrew Zolli

Jefferson was the rare student who came to college already knowing that there could be joy in studying.

~ John Ferling

when you’re the first in your family to go to college, you never truly feel like they’ve let you go.

~ New York Times Staff

While my college had done an excellent job recruiting me, I had no road map for what I was supposed to do once I made it to campus.

~ New York Times Staff

Sex education in the modern manner has been well-described as plumbing for hedonists.

~ George F. Will

Graduates fared better if, during college, they did any one of these: developed a relationship with a mentor; took on a project that lasted a semester or more; did a job or internship directly connected to their chosen field; or became deeply involved in a campus organization or activity (as opposed to minimally involved in a range of things).

~ Frank Bruni

(He) committed the cardinal sin in a college atmosphere not only of being different but of being different in a way that left a lot of people with the impression that he thought he was better than they were.

~ John Feinstein

Vulnerability creates unimaginable space to build each other up, as much as it creates ample room to tear each other down.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green changed. Then the vine threads came, then the buds. By the time the white petals died and the mint-colored berry poked out, the leaf shine was gilded tight and waxy.

~ Toni Morrison

Nothing that remains static is truly ever alive. Nature does not abide idleness. All energy sources of the natural world and the cosmos are in a constant motion, they are in a perpetual state of fluctuation. All forms of living must make allowances for the seasons of change. The Earth itself is twirling through space, spinning on its axis analogous to a child’s top. The unpredictable forces of instability brought about by a combination of motion, change, and flux propels the miraculous dynamism of existence.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Exiting from any long-term relationship comes at great personal expense, which explains why so many people are understandably reluctant to endure the cost of severance. Beginnings and endings are always dramatic and occasionally traumatic. Youthful brio allows us to engage in transformation. As we age, we carefully weigh the spectacle of continuing enduring harrowing situations or seeking melodramatic renovation of our core being. Analysis of the respective cost benefit ratio, consideration of the known versus the unknown, can delay or permanently deter us from altering our environment, leading our persona to become more rigid as we mature. Transformations in life are disconcerting to people who resist change.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I think I should be allowed to be only fair, or even mediocre, for a while.

~ Jim Bouton

JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting.

~ David Pietrusza

Eleanor Roosevelt on the changes in John F. Kennedy that led her to drop her opposition to his nomination for president: He has the qualities of a scholar, and a sense of history. I had the feeling that he was the man who can learn. I like him better than I ever had before because he seemed so little caulk-sure, and I think he has a mind that is open to new ideas.

~ David Pietrusza

His level of experience is nearly transcendent.

~ Davis Miller

He is able to put aside personal feelings and see the broad strokes. Experience counts in these things.

~ Geraldine Brooks

The author defines professionalism as exemplified by his subjects in their mutual unwillingness to take expected opposition personally. They would not allow grudges to get in the way of more important business.

~ Chris Matthews

He was experienced enough to spot the downside of doing the right thing.

~ Chris Matthews

Moral action – humble and honest – is the tribute that power must at some point pay to reason.

~ Ron Suskind

Rehnquist was just reflecting his shifting role, from outsider to the institutional embodiment of the Court.

~ Jeffrey Toobin

The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.

~ Robert Dallek

In being able to learn from his mistakes and grow, Eisenhower was transformed from a mere person into a personage.

~ Lynne Olson

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist--a master--and that is what Auguste Rodin was--can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

He found his irritation that the American memory could be short.

~ James Carl Nelson