#Adulthood Quotes

“Adults are only kids grown up”

“If you act like an adult when you're a kid you can afford to act like a kid the rest of your life.”

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

“Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won't do that.”

“Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life. They're people who don't give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought - sometimes it isn't much, either.”

“How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?”

“...But we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as 'business' and even though boys' games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders. No one pities either the boys or the men, though surely we deserve pity, for I cannot believe that a good judge would approve of the beatings I received as a boy on the ground that my games delayed my progress in studying subjects which would enable me to play a less creditable game later in life.”

“Once you let yourself begin to be grown-up, you face a world full of problems you can't solve. The politicians and specialists - adults, all - have a hard enough time trying to figure out where to look. It doesn't have to be that way. The greatest solutions in society are reached by corporate thinking, ruled by a motive to either make a profit or go out of business.”

“Miles: Well, things are kind of complicated right now. When you’re a grown-up, you’ll understand. Jonah: I don’t want to be a grown-up. Miles: Why not? Jonah: Because grown-ups always say that things are complicated.”

“The first half of life is learning to be an adult-the second half is learning to be a child.”

“To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents.”

“Don't let anybody raise you. You've been raised.”

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

“Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.”

“Grown-ups always say that things are complicated.”

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up ... our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.”

“Fettucini alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.”

“As an adult, I'm not supposed to go down slides. So if I'm at the top of a slide, I have to pretend that I got there accidentally. "How the hell did I get up here? I guess I have to slide down. Whee!" That's what you say when you're having fun. You refer to yourself and some other people.”

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.”

“Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.”

“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.”

“I speak and the child plays: who can be more serious than we are?”

“Life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup.”

“And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.”

“If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.”

“Being a senior in high school means you're not only getting closer to adulthood, but also ready to start thinking about your dreams and aspirations, whether that's applying for college, joining the military, or seeing the world. It's never too early to start thinking of your future, so use these high school senior year quotes about following dreams to inspire yourself and those around. Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.”

“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.”

“Psychologically I should say that a person becomes an adult at the point when he produces more than he consumes or earns more than he spends. This may be at the age of eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty-five. Some people remain unproductive and dependent children forever and therefore intellectually and emotionally immature.”

“And although I broke a lot of laws as a teenager, I straightened out immediately upon turning eighteen, when I realized the state had a legal right to execute me.”

“A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.”

“Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.”

“It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive.”

“Adults are always telling young people, 'These are the best years of your life.' Are they? I don't know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They'd like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they're having.”

“And then there is the universal role of adult. When you play that role, you take yourself and life very seriously. Spontaneity, lightheartedness, and joy are not part of that role.”

“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”

“Adults are just outdated children.”

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

“I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.”

“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.”

“Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.”

“Those who tread 'adult' as a term of approval cannot hope to be considered adult themselves. When I became a man I put away childish things, along with the desire to be very grown up.”

“Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations.”

“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.”

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

“It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.”

“Even in this world of course it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grown-up.”

“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves.”

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

“Grown ups are certainly very strange.”