You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

I wonder if realizing you're not sure about stuff is what makes you a grown up?

To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.

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

I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult.

Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you're grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation.'

'Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation?'

'Because if you can prove you're a victim, all rules are off. You can lash out at people. You don't have to be accountable for anything.

One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed.

Adulthood is the realization that sometimes an abstract principle is right and good for its own sake, that even if it hurts you today, even if it hurts others, being honest is still the right thing to do. In the same way that the adolescent realizes there’s more to the world than the child’s pleasure or pain, the adult realizes that there’s more to the world than the adolescent’s constant bargaining for validation, approval, and satisfaction. Becoming an adult is therefore developing the ability to do what is right for the simple reason that it is right.

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.

Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.

Waking up begins with am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now.

The maturity of man — that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play

As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.