maturity

Nothing is more foreign than the world of one's childhood when one has truly left it.

Get your "MENTAL" weight up, it stays FOREVER, money has no staying power!

Change takes time. It takes time for the seeds to begin growing within, time to understand and process, time for the growth to mature, and time for the old self to die and fall away.

To present is to take a stand and being responsible.

To fully understand how utterly amazing we really are we must first understand all of the things about us that are not, and then we must make our habitation where they are not.

In every experience we get to choose either love or fear as a response. Your character is formed by the percentages of those choices, which then forms your life.

It is in building the best of our abilities that we ultimately destroy the worst of our liabilities.

To realize your potential you must look beyond the end of yourself, realizing that where you end is most likely where you actually begin.

...The happy Warrior... 'tis, finally, the man, who, lifted high, conspicuous object in a nation's eye, or left unthought-of in obscurity,_ who, with a toward or untoward lot, prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not_ plays, in the many games of life, that one where what he most doth value must be won: whom neither shape or danger can dismay, nor thought of tender happiness betray; who, not content that former worth stand fast, looks forward, persevering to the last, from well to better, daily self-surpast: who, whether praise of him must walk the earth for ever, and to noble deeds give birth, or he must fall, to sleep without his fame, and leave a dead unprofitable name_ finds comfort in himself and in his cause; and, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws his breath in confidence of Heaven's applause: this is the happy Warrior; this is he that every man in arms should wish to be.

But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.

I imagined the lies the valedictorian was telling them right now. About the exciting future that lies ahead. I wish she'd tell them the truth: Half of you have gone as far in life as you're ever going to. Look around. It's all downhill from here. The rest of us will go a bit further, a steady job, a trip to Hawaii, or a move to Phoenix, Arizona, but out of fifteen hundred how many will do anything truly worthwhile, write a play, paint a painting that will hang in a gallery, find a cure for herpes? Two of us, maybe three? And how many will find true love? About the same. And enlightenment? Maybe one. The rest of us will make compromises, find excuses, someone or something to blame, and hold that over our hearts like a pendant on a chain.

So remember those who win the gameLose the love they sought to gainIn debitures of quality and dubious integrityTheir small-town eyes will gape at youIn dull surprise when payment dueExceeds accounts received at seventeen

Maturity is the ability to see what is important and what is not.

She was reasonable and rational, even through the tears. I hurt her. I know I hurt her. All I felt was anger. I wanted to yell and break stuff. Be demonstrative. Because she was being... she was so adult. And I just felt like a stupid kid. I didn't want to be in our empty place so I did what I do, I went to the movies. I wanted a big dark room to cry in.

So dangerous it is for a man to come into the acquisition of great fortune before he matures in virtues and principles.

your thoughts will make you a victor or a victim.

Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.

I couldn't shake the impulse to help him. It seemed that the older I got the more I believed that everyone, homeless or not, deserved to be treated at least like a human.