101 Growing Up Quotes For Kids And Grown Ups

Children always think of the future when growing up happens and they are independent to live the life they want.

Whereas for adults, there are things you look back on and wish you could change. You reminisce about those carefree childhood days, before children grow into adults.

These growing up quotes are relevant to everyone. No matter how many years old you are or how much experience you have gained, these quotes about growing will provide you an insight into this important aspect of life.

If you like growing up quotes, also check out you have my heart quotes and unique quotes. 
 

Quotes About Maturity

These quotes about growing up guide you through the never-ending task of growing up and gaining more experience.  

1.“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.

2.“Don't try to make me grow up before my time…”

-Louisa May Alcott, ‘Little Woman’.

3.“Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience. and pimples.”

-J. M. Barrie.

4.“A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

-Khaled Hosseini, ‘The Kite Runner’.

5.“Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.”

-Maya Angelou.

6.“I’ve found that growing up can mean a lot of things... It means I’ve just added more things to my list.”

-Taylor Swift.

7.“I think people make their own faces, as they grow.”

–Enid Blyton.

8.“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”

-Virginia Woolf.

9.“That’s the worst of growing up, and I’m beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.”

-L.M. Montogomery, ‘Anne of Green Gables’.

10.“Even though you’re growing up, you should never stop having fun.”

-Nina Dobrev.

11.“I think I’m finally growing up – and about time.”

–Elizabeth Taylor.

12.“Part of growing up is realizing you learn to love so many people.”

-Dylan O’Brien.

13.“You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.”

-Abraham Lincoln.

14.“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. Montogomery, ‘Anne of the Island.’

15.“The trick is growing up without growing old.”

-Casey Stengel.

16.“Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.”

-Roman Payne, ‘The Wanderess.’

17.“Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.”

–Nikki Giovanni.

18.“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”

-Mark Twain.

19.“Growing up is hard, love. Otherwise, everyone would do it.”

-Kim Harrison.

20.“Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.”

-Kurt Vonnegut.

21.“Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.”

-Daniel Black.

22.“Maturity is when your world opens up and you realize that you are not the centre of it.”

-M. J. Croan.

Quotes About Kids Growing Up

These growing up quotes explore the idea behind how we grow from kids and take on life head-on.

23.“I sometimes wonder if it's just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they're supposed to be by going nowhere.”

-Jodi Picoult.

24.“At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.”

-Benjamin Franklin.

25.“I think I may have to grow up without growing old. I think we're going to have to define differently what I'm going to be. We're going to have to define my growing up differently.”

–Mattie Stepanek.

26.“Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you’re young. But I don’t think we make any fewer when we’re grown up.”

-Jodie Picoult

27."You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.”

-P. J. O Rourke.

28.““When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all… Grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, and that’s it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that.”

-Elton Pope, 'Doctor Who', Episode 'Love & Monsters'.

29.“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

-E. E. Cummings.

30.“And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff. . . .”

–Holden, 'The Catcher In The Rye'.

31. “When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”

-Patrick Rothfuss, 'The Name of the Wind'.

32.“I still don't know what it really means to grow up. However, if I happen to meet you, one day in the future, by then, I want to become someone you can be proud to know.”

–Makoto Shinkai.

33.“You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you.”

-Gandalf, ‘The Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King’.

34.“A grownup is a child with layers on.”

-Woody Harrelson.

35.“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”

-Neil Gaiman, ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’.

36.“If you are to be, you must begin by assuming responsibility.”

–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

37.“I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.”

-Louisa May Alcott, ‘Little Women’.

38.“The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.”

–Max Lerner.

39.“Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do.”

–Judd Nelson.

40.“You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.”

–Ta-Nehisi Coates.

41.“It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.”

-Stephen Chbosky, ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower.’

42.“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.”

–Kevin, 'The Wonder Years'.

43.“Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.”

- Maddy, ‘Everything Everything’.

44.“Born to be wild – live to outgrow it.”

–Lao Tzu.

45.“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

–Pablo Picasso.

46.“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”

-Roger Zelazny.

47.“Understanding comes with life.”

-Gabriel, ‘Bless Me Ultima.’

48.“When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.”

–Chinese Proverb.

49.“Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.”

-Tom Stoppard.

50.“The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down.”

–Jawaharlal Nehru.

Relatable Growing Up Quotes

These growing up quotes, including quotes about children growing up, are quotes we can all understand.  

51.“That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.”

–Walt Disney.

52.“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”

–Dr Seuaa.

53.“Age is a necessary but insufficient requirement for growing up. There are immature old people, and there are appropriately mature young people.”

–Henry Cloud.

54.“Admitting our mistakes is a sign of maturity and wisdom. We learn more from knowing our mistakes.”

-Dr T. P. Chia.

55.“Growth is the only evidence of life.”

-John Henry Newman.

56.“Part of growing up is just taking what you learn from that and moving on and not taking it to heart.”

-Beverley Ann Mitchell.

57.“It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.”

–Roddy Doyle.

58.“If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.”

–Bette Davis

59.“Let's learn to grow up, before we grow old.”

–Martin H. Manser.

60.“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.

61.“I think the arts are very important for children growing up.”

–Stephen Schwartz.

62.“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

–C. S. Lewis.

63.“We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.”

–May Lamberton Becker.

64.“You grow up the day you have your first real laugh -- at yourself.”

-Ethel Barrymore.

65.“Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change”

–Cassandra Clare, 'City of Ashes'.

66.“Only when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born.”

–Ian McEwan, ‘The Child in Time’.

67.“Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.”

-Cindy Gerard, ‘To the Limit’.

68.“To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.”

–Euripides.

69.“Adulthood is accretive by nature, a thing which arrives in ragged stages and uneven overlaps.”

–Stephen King, ‘Heart in Atlantis.’

70.“That’s the trick of growing up. Nothing stays the same.”

-Hook, ‘Peter Darling.’

71.“When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.”

–Seth Godin.

72.“It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.”

–M. Scott Peck.

73.“To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.”

–Adam Phillips.

74.“You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.”

-Ethel Barrymore.

75.“Turning I would to I did is the grammar of growing up.”

–Anthony Marra.

76.“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

–Viktor Frankl.

77.“Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.”

-Lois McMaster Bujold.

78.“Don’t grow old to give up and don’t give up growing up.”

–Bernard Kelvin Clive.

79.“I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.”

–Terry Pratchett.

80.“Relax. You will become an adult. You will figure out your career. You will find someone who loves you. You have a whole lifetime; time takes time.”

-Johanna de Silentio.

81.“It took me ages to grow into being a woman, into being happy with it.”

–Helena Bonham Carter.

82.“One sign of maturity is the ability to be comfortable with people who are not like us.”

–Virgil A. Kraft.

83.“Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.”

― Jodi Picoult, 'My Sister's Keeper'.

84.“Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”

–Russell Baker.

85.“Such is life. We grow up.”

–John Green.

86.“Children who grow up with plenty can learn to give, just as children who grow up receiving love can learn to express it.”

–Fred Rogers.

87.“You can get what you want or you can just get old.”

–Billy Joel.

88.“Some people grow up with issues because they did not have their parents around growing up, many others have issues because their parents were around growing up”

–Quetza.

89.“Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest”

–Jodi Picoult, ‘Nineteen Minutes’.

90.“I knew that I had reached the end of childhood once I realized that adults in my life didn't know any more than I did.”

–Matthew Quick, ‘Every Exquisite Thing’.

91.“Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one’s eternal peril.”

–Laurens van der Post.

92.“For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments;”

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

93.“Growing up is difficult.”

–Jeanette Winterson.

94.“You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.”

–John J. Plomp.

95.“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”

–Chinese Proverb.

96.“As a man begins to understand the sacrifices he must make to live the life he dreams of, he often loses his courage for such a life.”

–Josie Sigler.

97.“You never have a friend all figured out. Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they tock.”

–Robert Brault.

98.“It's easy to grow old if you haven't grown up”

–John Hively.

99.“But then we grow up, and if we're smart and prepared and very determined, every once in a while, we actually do get the life we wanted.”

–Oprah Winfrey.

100.“Part of growing up is narrowing your life choices to a manageable size.”

–Amy E. Spiegel

101.“We’ve had bad luck with children; they’ve all grown up.”

–Christopher Morley.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for growing up quotes then why not take a look at worth quotes, or tribe quotes.