There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice.
—James Allen (1864–1912) British Philosophical Writer
It is heartening to realize that although we may crave comfort and routine, we nourish the soul’s growth primarily through what is hard. As Darwin saw it, it’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most responsive to change.
—Robert Cooper (b.1947) British Diplomat
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
When superior people hear of the Way, they carry it out with diligence. When middling people hear of the Way, it sometimes seems to be there, sometimes not. When lesser people hear of the Way, they ridicule it greatly. If they didn’t laugh at it, it wouldn’t be the Way.
—Laozi (fl.6th Century BCE) Chinese Philosopher, Sage
To sin is to be off the mark, that is, to inhibit development, contracting backward into regression rather than expanding forward into growth.
—Connie Zweig (b.1949) American Minister, Columnist, Psychotherapist
Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.
—Brian Tracy (b.1944) American Author, Motivational Speaker
When a difficult situation comes into your life, it is possible to tune in to your mind and say, “Okay, choose”. Are you going to make yourself miserable or content? Are you going to visualize scarcity or abundance? Are you going to put yourself down for getting angry with your husband or are you simply going to notice what insecurity you were feeling at the time and discuss it with him? The choice is definitely yours. Pick the one that contributes most to your aliveness and growth.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a different way to stand.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain and learn to accept it, not as a curse or punishment but as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004) American Psychiatrist
I am talking about the power within the self. This means power over your perceptions of the world, power over how you react to situations in your life, power to do what is necessary for your own self-growth, power to create joy and satisfaction in your life, power to act, and power to love.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
Every moment of our lives we are either growing or dying—and it’s largely a choice, not fate. Throughout its life cycle, every one of the body’s trillions of cells is driven to grow and improve its ability to use more of its innate yet untapped capacity. Research biologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who was twice awarded the Nobel Prize, called this syntropy, which he defined as the “innate drive in living matter to perfect itself”. It turns conventional thinking upside down…As living cells—or as people—there is no staying the same. If we aim for some middle ground or status quo, it’s an illusion—beneath the surface what’s actually happening is we’re dying, not growing. And the goal of a lifetime is continued growth, not adulthood. As Rene Dubos put it, “Genius is childhood recaptured”. For this to happen, studies show that we must recapture—or prevent the loss of—such child-like traits as the ability to learn, to love, to laugh about small things, to leap, to wonder, and to explore. It’s time to rescue ourselves from our grown-up ways before it’s too late.
—Robert Cooper (b.1947) British Diplomat
Climb mountains to see lowlands.
—Chinese Proverb
People don’t grow old. When they stop growing, they become old.
—Anonymous
If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
I will grow. I will become something new and grand, but no grander than I now am. Just as the sky will be different in a few hours, its present perfection and completeness is not deficient, so am I presently perfect and not deficient because I will be different tomorrow. I will grow and I am not deficient.
—Wayne Dyer (b.1940) American Motivational Writer, Author, Motivational Speaker
In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be, by remaining what we are.
—Max De Pree (1924–2017) American Businessman
If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don’t abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
Image is what people think we are; integrity is what we really are.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows might go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
The rain-weeping and the sun burning twine together to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh. Cry easily like a little child.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
I’ve watched a lot of mid-career people, and Yogi Berra says you can observe a lot just by watching. I’ve concluded that most people enjoy learning and growing. And many are dearly troubled by the self-assessments of mid-career. Such self-assessments are no great problem at your age. You’re young and moving up. The drama of your own rise is enough. But when you reach middle age, when your energies aren’t what they used to be, then you’ll begin to wonder what it all added up to; you’ll begin to look for the figure in the carpet of your life. I have some simple advice for you when you begin that process. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Look ahead. Someone said that Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. And above all don’t imagine that the story is over. Life has a lot of chapters.
—John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American Activist
A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning to love.
—Leo Buscaglia (1924–98) American Motivational Speaker
Life is growth-a challenge of environment. If we cannot meet our everyday surroundings with equanimity and pleasure and grow each day in some useful direction, then this splendid balance of cosmic forces which we call life is on the road toward misfortune, misery and destruction. Therefore, health is the most precious of all things.
—Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American Botanist, Scientist
Still round the corner there may wait,
A new road or a secret gate.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
The depth of your mythology is the extent of your effectiveness.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
—Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American Novelist Essayist
When a bonsai stops growing, you know it’s dead.
—Japanese Proverb
He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Little by little, wean yourself.This is the gist of what I have to say.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
The spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
However, a good life consists of more than simply the totality of enjoyable experiences. It must also have a meaningful pattern, a trajectory of growth that results in the development of increasing emotional, cognitive, and social complexity.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (b.1934) Hungarian-American Psychologist
Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?
—Ray Kroc (1902–84) American Entrepreneur, Businessperson
Shedding one’s skin. The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. So do the spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirit.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet
Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Every Warrior of the Light has felt afraid of going into battle. Every Warrior of the Light has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone. Every Warrior of the Light has trodden a path that was not his. Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons. Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light. Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties. Every Warrior of the Light has said ‘yes’ when he wanted to say ‘no.’ Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved. That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.
—Paulo Coelho (b.1947) Brazilian Songwriter, Novelist
There is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she doesn’t just fall to a person’s lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn’t go to anyone other than oneself to find her.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.
—M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American Psychiatrist, Author
Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves – to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before.
—Stewart B. Johnson
Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American Head of State
Nothing is lost upon a person who is bent upon growth; nothing is wasted on one who is always preparing for his work and life by keeping eyes, mind, and heart open to nature, men, books, experience. Such a man finds ministries to his education on all sides; everything cooperates with his passion for growth.
—Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846–1916) American Essayist, Editor
Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges Nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. ‘Tis thought and digestion which make books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
We’re all fools…all the time. It’s just we’re a different kind each day. We think, I’m not a fool today. I’ve learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we’re not perfect and live accordingly.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Life doesn’t do anything to you. It only reveals your spirit.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.
—Bruce Lee (1940–73) American Martial Artist, Actor, Philosopher