Adulthood Quotes

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

  Bruce Springsteen

  Challenges, Innocence, Holding On

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• The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life.

  Darren Hardy

  Responsibility, Childhood, Graduates

  Darren Hardy (2011). “The Compound Effect”, p.36, Hachette UK

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• Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

  Walt Disney

  Movie, Gambling, Entertainment

  79 Copy quote

• Adulthood isn't black and white - it's a thousand shades of grey. Or taupe. It's not who you are, it's where you are.

  Elizabeth Noble

  Black And White, Shade, Where You Are

  7 Copy quote

• I spent my whole childhood wishing I were older and now I'm spending my adulthood wishing I were younger.

  Ricky Schroder

  Childhood, Wish, Spending

  "Ricky Schroder Stars in New Film While Musing About Politics". Interview with Tamar Abrams, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 4, 2011.

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• What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Birthday, Time, Children

  "'Une femme rompue' ('A Woman Destroyed')". Book by Simone de Beauvoir, 1967.

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• Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self.

  John Fowles

  Self, Age, Stage

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Family, Children, Maturity

  The Second Sin (1973) "Childhood"

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

  Robert Redford

  Aging, Tough, Knows

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• 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. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Maturity, Thinking, Doctors

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• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Birthday, Time, Maturity

  Virginia Woolf (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1912-1918”, Chatto & Windus

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• We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.'

  Sydney J. Harris

  Education, Responsibility, Parenting

  36 Copy quote

• For me adulthood is realising that there are no grown-ups and everyone else is winging it.

  Sarah Beeny

  Winging It, Realising

  21 Copy quote

• Adulthood does not exist. Man is an eternal child.

  Nelson Rodrigues

  Children, Men, Doe

  5 Copy quote
• 

  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.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Moving On, Growing Up, Memories

  Nicholas Sparks (2013). “True Believer”, p.75, Hachette UK

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• The creative adult is the child who has survived.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Children, Creativity, Imagination

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2017). “No Time to Spare: Thinking about what Matters”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Adulthood was invented to repair the wounds of childhood.

  Joy Browne

  Women, Childhood, Wounds

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• It seems to me that the years between eighteen and twenty-eight are the hardest, psychologically. It’s then you realize this is make or break, you no longer have the excuse of youth, and it is time to become an adult – but you are not ready.

  Helen Mirren

  Maturity, Eight, Years

  Helen Mirren (2011). “In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.

  Ethan Hawke

  Dream, Growing Up, Kids

  20 Copy quote

• Maturity is the ability to postpone gratification.

  Sigmund Freud

  Maturity, Psychology, Mature

  301 Copy quote

• Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.

  Dr. Seuss

  Children, Childhood, Adults

  "Of Sneetches and Whos and the Good Dr. Seuss: Essays on the Writings and Life of Theodor Geisel". Book by Thomas Fensch, p. 96, 1997.

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

  Socrates

  Life, Childhood, Age

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• When you become a teenager, you step onto a bridge. You may already be on it. The opposite shore is adulthood. Childhood lies behind. The bridge is made of wood. As you cross, it burns behind you

  Gail Carson Levine

  Teenager, Lying, Opposites

  Gail Carson Levine (2013). “Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly”, p.1, Harper Collins

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• Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood.

  Louise J. Kaplan

  Teenager, Childhood, Adolescence

  Louise J. Kaplan (1995). “Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood”, Touchstone Books

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• Personal change, growth, development, identity formation--these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events--a job, a mate, a child--through which we will pass into a life of relative ease.

  Lillian B. Rubin

  Jobs, Children, Pain

  14 Copy quote