In some ways, spiritual growth resembles a game of leapfrog. As soon as we've got past one puzzling question, we discover we're faced with another.

A man s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

The Child is father of the Man.

Every man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings.

Manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort them.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

Life is cut to allow for growth ... one may vigorously put on weight before one fills it out entirely.

There is no fruit which is not bitter before it is ripe.

Some people seem as if they can never have been children, and others seem as if they could never be anything else.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, And men must walk, at least, before they dance.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it-torn up to irrecoverable tatters.

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

The child is not a prisoner of its inheritance; it holds its inheritance as a new creation which its future actions will unfold.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

The great golden goal of every childhood-being a Grownup-seemed impossibly far away. There were for us no intermediate goals to fill the great, dull gap; no graduation from one stage of education to the next; no adolescent first parties to look forward to.

As every parent knows, children go through an adolescent growth spurt, during which they put on inches at an alarming rate. Humans are unique in this respect: most mammalian species, including apes, progress almost directly from infancy to adulthood.

Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.

I know the most important faculty to develop is one for hard, continuous and varied work and living; but the difference between knowing this and doing anything consistent about it is often abysmal.

There is a time in our life when we need to strut our stuff and groove on grandiosity, when we need to be viewed as remarkable and rare, when we need to exhibit ourself in front of a mirror that reflects our self-admiration, when we need a parent to function as that mirror.