Best Growing Up Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.”

“When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.”

“Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.”

“She rode down the sidewalk, turned toward the shadow side of the street and melted into darkness. I didn't know it then, but after that night, I'd see less and less of Dove. She began to dabble with things best left undabbled with.”

“By mastering the slow art of nonreaction, we transform conflict into an opportunity for maturation. We learn to regulate our emotions, communicate far more effectively, and build stronger, more harmonious relationships.”

“Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can't help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now.”

“Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back.”

“I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.”

“I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be.”

“I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet.”

“I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening.”

“Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.”

“I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.”

“I know that your soul is on life support and that you feel lost and like you’re completely spinning out of control, but you’re finding yourself — here, tonight… even in this darkness.”

“Your personal truth is your gift to the world.”

“Why wait? So precious is this life—this gift—this temporary blindness. Burn and drown and embrace the false dark, then grasp the unthinkable height of resulting joy. For in the end, in the light of truth when the flesh is cast off, there is nothing but this.”

“But when I think about ponds infested with gallon-big goldfish, I feel a kind of triumph. I see something that no one expected to live not just alive but impossibly flourishing, and no longer alone. I see a creature whose present existence must have come as a surprise even to itself. Imagine having the power to become resilient to all that is hostile to us. Confinement, solitude, our own toxic waste... Imagine the freedom of encountering space for the first time and taking it up... A dumped goldfish has no model for what a different and better life might look like, but it finds it anyway. I want to know what it feels like to be unthinkable too, to invent a future that no one expected of you.”

“Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?”

“If ever I was running, it was towards you.”

“I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault.”

“I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break because our souls are tied.”

“I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…”

“I want to be the best version of myself for anyone who is going to someday walk into my life and need someone to love them beyond reason.”

“Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.”

“I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…”

“It was hopeless to regret; instead, he made a pact with Regret: “You will lead me back to Hope, and nowhere else.”

“I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you.”

“Please… Whoever you are, whatever you are… I believe in you even though I don’t completely understand you. I feel you around me even though I can’t exactly describe what I’m feeling. Sometimes things happen to me and I know that you’re there and I’m humbled by the lack of coincidence that exists in the world. Whatever you want from me, it’s yours — just please help me. You know how I get when I lose control, and I find myself constantly being pulled back there these days.”

“Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?”

“I think we just forget when we're older all the hard things about being a child. I remember feeling anxious a lot of the time. It's not always true that children are happier than adults. Even if you had a nice childhood.”

“I think wet use forget when we're older all the hard things about being a child. I remember feeling anxious a lot of the time. It's not always true that children are happier than adults. Even if you had a nice childhood.”

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.”

“Most parents try really hard to give their kids the best possible life. They give them the best food and clothes they can afford, take their own kind of take on training kids to be honest and polite. But what they don't realize is no matter how much they try, their kids will get out there. Out to this complicated little world. If they are lucky they will survive, through backstabbers, broken hearts, failures and all the kinds of invisible insane pressures out there. But most kids get lost in them. They will get caught up in all kinds of bubbles. Trouble bubbles. Bubbles that continuously tell them that they are not good enough. Bubbles that get them carried away with what they think is love, give them broken hearts. Bubbles that will blur the rest of the world to them, make them feel like that is it, that they've reached the end. Sometimes, even the really smart kids, make stupid decisions. They lose control. Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second of every day. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives.”

“and that makes him wish all over again that his dad would stop crying, so he can have a turn.”

“Growing up does not necessarily mean to fit into the stereotypes of being an adult.”

“Growing up does not necessarily mean to fit into the stereotypes of being an adult. Because maturity comes from a person's wisdom. To truly grow up means to be the wisest person that you can be. Turns out there are still some adults that need to grow up.”

“Para aprender a vivir a veces es necesario un rasguño o más.”

“Life's full of chances to hurt yourself or someone else [...] In the next few days, you'll have more chances to hurt yourself than most men get in a lifetime. It's learning things and doing things right that make it worthwhile, make a man easy with himself. When I was young, nobody could tell me anything. I knew it all. It took a lot of mistakes to teach me that I didn't know goose shit from tapioca.”

“I need to be willing to play the game. I need to be willing to put myself out there, and be vulnerable, and take chances, even though I might lose.”

“It’s your life”

“That's one of the things we learn as we grow older -- how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.”

“Relax. You will become an adult. You will figure out your career. You will find someone who loves you. You have a whole lifetime; time takes time. The only way to fail at life is to abstain.”

“The right thing to do is so easy to see when you're seventeen years old and don't have to make any big decisions. When you know that no matter what you do, someone will take care of you and fix everything. But when you're grown up, the world is not that black and white, and the right thing doesn't a tidy little arrow pointing to it.”

“There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don't lose yourself at happy hour, but don't lose yourself on the corporate ladder, either.”

“Where'd the days go, when all we did was play? And the stress that we were under wasn't stress at all just a run and a jump into a harmless fall”

“It's hard at times, but it makes a kid strong in ways that most people can't understand. Teaches them that even though people are left behind, new ones will inevitable take their place; that every place has something good - and bad - to offer. It makes a kid grow up fast.”

“Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on.”

“I am a free soul, singing my heart out by myself no matter where I go and I call strangers my friends because I learn things and find ways to fit them into my own world. I hear what people say, rearrange it, take away and tear apart until it finds value in my reality and there I make it work. I find spaces in between the cracks and cuts where it feels empty”

“I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrow”

“when we were kids”

“I haven’t been very impressed lately.”

“Don't give up all your romance, Anne," he whispered shyly, "a little bit is a good thing - not too much, of course, but keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it.”

“Most parents try really hard to give their kids the best possible life. They give them the best food and clothes they can afford, take their own kind of take on training kids to be honest and polite. But what they don't realize is no matter how much they try, their kids will get out there. Out to this complicated little world. If they are lucky they will survive, through backstabbers, broken hearts, failures and all the kinds of invisible insane pressures out there. But most kids get lost in them. They will get caught up in all kinds of bubbles. Trouble bubbles. Bubbles that continuously tell them that they are not good enough. Bubbles that get them carried away with what they think is love, give them broken hearts. Bubbles that will blur the rest of the world to them, make them feel like that is it, that they've reached the end. Sometimes, even the really smart kids, make stupid decisions. They lose control. Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second of every day. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives.”

“I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I realize the inconvenient, inappropriate truth: ‘I love this man… and it has swallowed me.”

“He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it”

“Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.”

“Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.”

“My friend Madea has "attitude" that comes with wisdom. Back in our teens and twenties, we thought we knew everything and made all those foolish mistakes. Then, when we got a little older, at thirty, we started getting these flashes of light, revelations of what a great and lucky thing it is that we didn't get caught doing those stupid things back then. Around forty, if we are lucky, we stop lying to ourselves. Fifty and above, we've run out of patience for foolishness. Take me to the bottom line.”

“Our Peter Pan generation is unhappy. All our lives, we want to grow up—”

“A butterfly does not return to a caterpillar after it is mature. We must learn to grow and evolve into a stronger, wiser and better version of ourselves. Life occurs in stages and taking a step at a time is key to learning and growing.”

“If you happen to be white in a white country; pretty according to the dictates of fashion; rich in a country where money is adored, it’s almost impossible to grow up and to grow up honest inside. It is almost impossible. 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. But to grow up, to take responsibility for the time you take up, and the space you occupy, to honor every living person for his or her humanity, that is to grow up.”

“It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.”

“When you lose your ego, you win. It really is that simple.”

“He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.”

“If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.”

“Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.”