Maturity Matters!

By Celia White

Some sage words for those who believe that growing old is a serious impediment…….

“An adult with a capacity for true maturity is one who has grown out of childhood without losing childhood„ his best traits has retained the basic emotional strengths of infancy, the stubborn autonomy of toddlerhood, the capacity for wonder and pleasure and playfulness of the pre-school years, and the idealism and passion of adolescence and has incorporated these into a new pattern of simplicity dominated by adult stability, wisdom, knowledge, sensitivity to other people, responsibility, strength and purpose.”

Stone and Church, 1973

With luck we will ALL attain maturity some day – remember though it’s all about how we do the journey not just getting to the destination!

Herm added these gems:

Maturity leads to old age. So, here's some aphorisms on aging:

Colette (French author):

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest way of not growing old too quickly.

James Russell Lowell:

As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new,- and near the end
The milestones into headstone change,
'neath every one a friend.

O.Wendell Holmes:

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more
cheerful than to be forty years old.

John Barrymore:

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

Maurice Chevalier:

Old age isn't too bad when you consider the alternative.

C. May Harris (U.S. Author):

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

Bob Hope:

I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap.

Rochefoucauld (French writer):

Old people love to give advise to console themselves for no longer being able to set a bad example.

H.W. Longfellow:

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Whatever poet, orator or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.

Groucho Marx:

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

G.B. Shaw:

Old men are dangerous: It doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Margareth Meade:

If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

Eric Hofer (U.S. philosopher):

The best part of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.

G.C. Lichtenberg (German philosopher):

Nothing makes one grow old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing old.

Andre Maurois (French critic):

Growing old is more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.

And finally from Robert Browning:

"Come grow old with me The best is yet to be!"