Maturity Illusion Quotes

At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

It's always interesting to me to see people projecting things, like people would say, "This record is much more mature than your other record" and I would think, "Well, this record has more songs from when I was 18 on it than the other one."

When I became a man, I put away childish things and got more elaborate and expensive childish things from France and Japan.

I used to believe everything my brother told me, because he was older and I figured he knew more about the world. But as it turns out, being a grown-up doesn’t mean you’re fearless. It just means you fear different things.

I kind of thought when I was 30 that you're as good as your going to get. And that's not true.

And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

Though it sounds absurd, it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I felt at twenty.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same.

Anne laughed and sighed. She felt very old and mature and wise — which showed how young she was.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.