Adulthood QuotesWhen I reached adulthood, even now, I could afford to belong to a country club. But I could never belong to a private club because of my experience as a child, because it would isolate me from the whole of humanity  The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence A boy becomes an adult three years before his parents think he does, and about two years after he thinks he does If you treat a sick child like an adult and a sick adult like a child, everything usually works out pretty well. What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life. . . . Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world Even before baptism, a child or an adult can have the Holy Ghost testify to their hearts of sacred truth. They must act on that testimony to retain it, but it will guide them toward goodness Psychologically I should say that a person becomes an adult at the point when he produces more than he consumes or earns more than he spends. This may be at the age of eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty-five. Some people remain unproductive and dependent children forever and therefore intellectually and emotionally immature On average, an infant laughs nearly two hundred times a day; an adult, only twelve. Maybe they are laughing so much because they are looking at us. To be able to preserve joyousness of heart and yet to be concerned in thought: in this way we can determine good fortune and misfortune on earth, and bring to perfection everything on earth If this was adulthood the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that she could now eat dessert without eating her vegetables To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we stop saying "It got lost," and say "I lost it." Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child 1 2 |
