Growing up is a journey unique to each individual, filled with moments of learning, self-discovery, and personal growth. This collection of 130 quotes about growing up brings together a wide range of voices from different walks of life – writers, philosophers, celebrities, and thinkers – each offering their unique insights on this universal experience. These inspirational life quotes touch on various themes such as the challenges of maturity, the inevitability of change, and the journey towards greater self-awareness.
As you explore these quotes, you might find words that resonate with your own experiences of growing up or shed light on aspects of life that you hadn’t considered before. Some of these quotes may inspire you, some might make you think, and others could offer comfort or a fresh perspective on starting over. They serve as reminders of the shared human experience of growing up, reflecting the wisdom and understanding gained through different stages of life. I hope you enjoy them.
- “You don’t stop dreaming when you grow old, you grow old when you stop dreaming.” – Unknown
- “You don’t grow up, you just get older.” – Jon Bon Jovi
- “The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” – H.L. Mencken
- “It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
- “The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.” – Frank A. Clark
- “The awkward moment when you’re wearing Nike’s and you can’t do it.” – Unknown
- “A grownup is a child with layers on.” – Woody Harrelson
- “Sometimes you have to be apart from people you love, but that doesn’t make you love them any less. Sometimes you love them more.” – Nicholas Sparks
- “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings
- “Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
- “No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you’re keeping the man-child alive.” – John Cassavetes
- “To be able to watch your children’s children grow up is truly a blessing from above.” – Byron Pulsifer
- “Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you’re young. But I don’t think we make any fewer when we’re grown up.” – Jodi Picoult
- “Sometimes the hardest part of growing up is that you have to do what is right for you, even if it means breaking someone’s heart. Including your own.” – Unknown
- Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind.” – Samuel Ullman
- “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “The best part about growing up is that you decide who you want to be.” – Unknown
- “Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.” – Betty Friedan
- “Growing up is not the problem, forgetting is.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- “One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out you didn’t know it at all.” – Jodi Picoult
- “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.” – Alden Nowlan
- “Growing up is not being so dead-set on making everybody happy.” – Reba McEntire
- “Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” – Franz Kafka
- “Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you’re in diapers; the next day you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul.” – The Wonder Years
- “Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” – Anne Frank
- “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” – Chili Davis
- “Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.” – Tom Stoppard
- “We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.” – Max Depree
- “Don’t grow up too quickly, lest you forget how much you love the beach.” – Michelle Held
- “Growing up is a trap, but growing old is a journey.” – Unknown
- “Growing up means learning to wait.” – Unknown
- “Age is a high price to pay for maturity.” – Tom Stoppard
- “The beauty of growing older is that you’ve lived to see another day.” – Unknown
- “The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.” – Patrick Rothfuss
- “Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.” – Russell Baker
- “The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience… and pimples.” – J.M. Barrie
- “The hardest part about growing up is letting go of what you were used to, and moving on with something you’re not.” – Lyrikal
- “You are always too young to give up, and never too old to start over.” – Richie Norton
- “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” – J.D. Salinger
- “We don’t mature momentarily, but over the long-term.” – John C. Maxwell
- “Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience and pimples.” – J.M. Barrie
- “We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.” – Bryan White
- “I am convinced that growing up is a process of managing to find opportunities for learning in the midst of overwhelming chaos.” – Kay Redfield Jamison
- “As you grow up, your priorities change. Nights out are swapped for nights in, your circle gets smaller and games, drama and partying every day just aren’t entertaining anymore. You get to a point where it’s quality over quantity, like your career, who you spend your time with and your goals for the future. What matters to you most is peace, stability, loyalty, and growth.” – Unknown
- “Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” – Virginia Woolf
- “No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” – Haruki Murakami
- “Most people won’t realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.” – Katherine Anne Porter
- “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” – Mark Twain
- “To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about.” – Jostein Gaarder
- “Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” – David Bowie
- “Life is about change, sometimes it’s painful, sometimes it’s beautiful, but most of the time it’s both.” – Kristin Kreuk
- “Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.” – Unknown
- “We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” – May Lamberton Becker
- “Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework, never finished.” – Lois McMaster Bujold
- “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor E. Frankl
- “Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience.” – J.M. Barrie
- “Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses, and start making changes.” – Roy T. Bennett
- “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.” – L.M. Montgomery
- “Adulthood is like the vet, and we’re all the dogs that were excited for the car ride until we realized where we’re going.” – Unknown
- “I spent a long time trying to find my center. Now I just say I’m always centered, just sometimes off balance.” – Alex Grey
- “We grow too soon old and too late smart.” – Pennsylvania Dutch Proverb
- “It’s a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.” – Ama Ata Aidoo
- “We don’t mature through age; we mature in awareness.” – Byron Katie
- “Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.” – Clary Fray
- “The hardest part of growing up is that you have to do what is right for you, even if it hurts someone you love.” – Unknown
- “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.” – Ethel Barrymore
- “The day we lose our need for dreams is the day we lose our humanity.” – Anthony Robbins
- “As we grow up, we realize it’s less important to have lots of friends and more important to have real ones.” – Unknown
- “As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer.” – Robert Quillen
- “Growing up, I slowly had this process of realizing that all the things around me that people had told me were just the natural way things were, the natural order of things, was just completely wrong.” – Win Butler
- “The older I get, the more I understand that it’s okay to live a life others don’t understand.” – Jenna Woginrich
- “Part of growing up is just taking what you learn from that and moving on and not taking it to heart.” – Beverley Mitchell
- “To grow up requires a whole life. But at the end of your life, you still are unsure whether you have grown up.” – Ilya Prigogine
- “Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.” – Cassandra Clare
- “The great thing about getting older is that you get a chance to tell the stories you love over and over again.” – Kenneth Branagh
- “The older I get, the more I see how much I behaved like a child.” – Criss Jami
- “I think that’s part of growing up – learning to forgive yourself.” – Rachel Weisz
- “One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.” – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” – Madeleine L’Engle
- “The day you realize you’re not just a survival story, you become the author of your own.” – Unknown
- “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis
- “Growing up means realizing a lot of your friends aren’t really your friends.” – Unknown
- “The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “The hardest part of growing up is letting go of what you used to believe.” – Unknown
- “Growing up is understanding that life is less about you and more about others.” – Unknown
- “Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional.” – Carroll Bryant
- “You grow up on the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.” – Ethel Barrymore
- “Sometimes you have to accept that people’s part in your story is over.” – Unknown
- “Sometimes you have to grow up not because you want to but because it’s the right thing to do.” – Unknown
- “Growing up is learning that some lies are just kindness.” – Unknown
- “Sometimes growing up means growing apart.” – Unknown
- “Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.” – Elizabeth Lawrence
- “Maturity is when your world opens up and you realize that you are not the center of it.” – M.J. Croan
- “Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.” – Daniel Black
- “The beauty of growing older is that it takes such a long time.” – Unknown
- “Growing up is optional. Growing old is inevitable.” – Unknown
- “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.” – Ethel Barrymore
- “I am convinced that most people do not grow up… We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old.” – Maya Angelou
- “I guess that’s part of growing up, too – saying goodbye to the things you used to love.” – Jenny Han
- “To be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid.” – Unknown
- “Everyone’s a star and deserves the right to twinkle.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “Aging is mandatory, growing up is optional.” – Walt Disney
- “Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.” – George Carlin
- “To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents.” – Maya Angelou
- “Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
- “The trick is growing up without growing old.” – Casey Stengel
- “As we grow up, we realize it becomes less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones.” – Laguna Beach
- “Growing up is never straightforward. There are moments when everything is fine and other moments where you realize that there are certain memories you’ll never get back, and certain people that are going to change, and the hardest part is knowing that there’s nothing you can do except watch them.” – Alden Nowlan
- “Age merely shows what children we remain.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “Growing up means admitting the things you never thought you would become.” – Unknown
- “Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90. Time is a concept that humans created.” – Yoko Ono
- “The day you realize you’re not just a survival story, you become the author of your own.” – Andrea Gibson
- “Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.” – Carol Burnett
- “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” – Stephen R. Covey
- “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.” – George Burns
- “Age is a necessary but insufficient requirement for growing up. There are immature old people, and there are appropriately mature young people.” – Henry Cloud
- “I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you’re not the center of the universe.” – Katherine Paterson
- “We grow up the day we take our first laugh at ourselves.” – Ethel Barrymore
- “Growing up means learning what life is. When you’re little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks. Then you hit the real world.” – Ben Stein
- “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “Growing up is never easy. You hold on to things that were. You wonder what’s to come.” – The Wonder Years
- “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” – Andrew Carnegie
- “Growing up means learning what life is. When you’re little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks. Then you hit the real world. Suddenly, you get it: This is what it’s like. This is how it works. Not those dreams you had. This is reality.” – Ben Stein
- “Growing up is learning to start saying no to things you couldn’t do without yesterday.” – Unknown
- “It’s not that our family has no taste, it’s just that our family’s taste is inconsistent.” – Wes Anderson
- “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis
- “Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the street and then getting hit by an airplane.” – Unknown
- “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” – Tom Robbins
