Get ready to step into the real world by reading these growing up quotes.
Being old does not necessarily mean that you have grown up. Growing up means that you have made a conscious effort to become a better and more mature person.
It is being kinder, stronger, and more resilient when facing life’s hardships.
As difficult as it sounds, growing up is a task everyone should do to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.
Being a kid forever in this kind of world will only make it harder for you and your loved ones.
If you need advice on this topic, feel free to read our collection below.
We’re positive you’ll gain life-changing wisdom that will help you become a better person in all aspects of life!
Continue to the complete list below.
And don’t forget to check out these quotes to live by and positive quotes.
Best Growing up Quotes
1. “Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.” – Walt Disney
2. “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
3. “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 Arnold
4. “Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.” – Daniel Black
5. “Part of growing up is realizing you learn to love so many people. It’s about forming those relationships and finding what will last forever.” – Dylan O’Brien
6. “It was a sign of growing up when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.” – Roddy Doyle
7. “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
8. “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old. You grow old when you stop laughing.” – George Bernard Shaw
9. “Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.” – Cassandra Clare
10. “Growing up is, at heart, the process of learning to take responsibility for whatever happens in your life. To choose growth is to embrace a love that heals.” – bell hooks
Famous Quotes About Growing Up
11. “The trick is growing up without growing old.” – Casey Stengel
12. “Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.” – Tom Stoppard
13. “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings
14. “Even though you’re growing up, you should never stop having fun.” – Nina Dobrev
15. “Growing up, we are told many things. One being you can do anything. But somewhere between child and adult, things change.” – Julie Hébert
16. “Growing up is hard. Otherwise, everyone would do it.” – Kim Harrison
17. “As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot.” – Ray Kroc
Also read: Famous Quotes, Encouraging Quotes
Short Growing up Quotes to Remember in Your Adulthood
18. “Don’t grow old to give up and don’t give up growing up.” – Bernard Kelvin Clive
19. “Let’s learn to grow up before we grow old.” – Martin Manser
20. “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh, at yourself.” – Ethel Barrymore
21. “When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.” – Tom Robbins
22. “To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents.” – Maya Angelou
23. “Turning ‘I would’ to ‘I did’ is the grammar of growing up.” – Anthony Marra
24. “Don’t try to make me grow up before my time.” – Louisa May Alcott
Growing up Quotes That Will Give You Realizations in Life
25. “Growing up is never easy. You hold onto things that were. You wonder what’s to come. But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been and look ahead to what would be—other days, new days, days to come. The thing is, we didn’t have to hate each other for getting older. We just had to forgive ourselves for growing up.” – Kevin Arnold
26. “We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” – May Lamberton Becker
27. “It happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you’ve known forever don’t see things the way you do. So you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.” – Nicholas Sparks
28. “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
29. “One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.” – Patricia Briggs
30. “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
31. “I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older, like varicose veins.” – Terry Pratchett
32. “Growing up is never straightforward. There are moments when everything is fine and other moments where you realize that there are certain memories that you’ll never get back and certain people that are going to change, and the hardest part is knowing that there’s nothing you can do except watch them.” – Alden Nowlan
33. “The right thing to do is so easy to see when you’re 17 years old and don’t have to make any big decisions. When you know that no matter what you do, someone will take care of you and fix everything. But when you’re grown up, the world is not that black and white, and the right thing doesn’t a tidy little arrow pointing to it.” – Huntley Fitzpatrick
34. “As children, we don’t get to pick the ways in which we’re loved. 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
Also read: Mom Quotes
Profound Growing up Quotes That Will Open Your Eyes to Reality
35. “Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.” – Nikki Giovanni
36. “Growing up is losing some illusions in order to acquire others.” – Virginia Woolf
37. “Don’t grow up too fast, darling. Age is inevitable, but if you nurture a childlike heart, you’ll never grow old.” – Beth Hoffman
38. “Part of growing up is just taking what you learn from that and moving on and not taking it to heart.” – Beverley Mitchell
39. “For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments, and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
40. “Growing old is unavoidable, but never growing up is possible. I believe you can retain certain things from your childhood if you protect them—certain traits, certain places where you don’t let the world go.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
41. “Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.” – Sylvia Plath
42. “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
Growing up Quotes for Everyone Who Wants to Move Forward
43. “Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest, learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.” – Jodi Picoult
44. “Who we are, is what we believe. As you were growing up, you may have been told over and over that you were good at doing something. You believed it. Similarly, if you constantly tell people they are doing a good job, they will eventually believe it even if, in the beginning, they have doubts about their ability. In essence, we become what we believe.” – Catherine Pulsifer
45. “You must pay the penalty of growing up. You must leave fairyland behind you.” – L.M. Montgomery
46. “That’s one of the things we learn as we grow older, how to forgive. It comes easier at 40 than it did at 20.” – L.M. Montgomery
47. “That’s the trick of growing up. Nothing stays the same. Hook sounded oddly sympathetic. You see the faults in everything. Including yourself.” – Austin Chant
48. “If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again.” – Mary Beth Danielson
49. “Young alienation, disappointment, and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do.” – Judd Nelson
50. “In this day and age, some turn 18 and think they’re a man or a woman, and that’s it, but that’s just not true. You have to establish your manhood or your womanhood with actions.” – Orlando McGuire
Also read: Quotes on Moving Forward
Insightful Growing up Quotes That Will Teach You About Mistakes
51. “Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you’re young. But I don’t think we make any fewer when we’re grown up.” – Jodi Picoult
52. “I know that in my past, I was young and irresponsible, but that’s what growing up is. You learn from your mistakes.” – Lindsay Lohan
53. “I make mistakes growing up. I’m not perfect. I’m not a robot.” – Justin Bieber
More Growing up Quotes That You Need to Read Today
54. “I think, as you’re growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you’re an adult. Your ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don’t feel things more as we get older.” – Spike Jonze
55. “One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can’t ever quite get rid of.” – John Green
56. “Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework, never finished.” – Lois McMaster Bujold
57. “Most people don’t really grow up. What they do is grow old, they grow tiresome even, and self-righteous maybe for it is very hard to grow.” – Larry Chang
58. “Age is a necessary but insufficient requirement for growing up. There are immature old people, and there are appropriately mature young people.” – Henry Cloud and John Townsend
59. “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. The only way to fail at life is to abstain.” – Johanna de Silentio
60. “For me, growing up felt like a roller coaster ride at times, but looking back, I don’t think that it was such a bad thing. It was all part of the excitement of being young.” – Jameela Jamil
How Did You Deal With Growing Up?
One of the most complex parts of growing up is having full accountability for our actions. As adults, we will fully realize that every step we take will affect us, other people, and our future. We have responsibilities and obligations to fulfill, and through these things, we become more mature.
When we grow up, we gain the courage to accept our weaknesses, flaws, and mistakes. In the long run, we change for the better as part of being accountable.
Making mistakes and failing is a big part of our life, but we should not be discouraged. We must remember that no matter how many times we act wrongly, the important thing is that we learn from it and do our best to correct ourselves. Through accepting our mistakes—and actively choosing to change our ways—we grow up because we become better people by doing what is right.
Hopefully, these quotes were able to guide you on what growing up means. Our collection is full of wisdom that will teach you to move forward and improve. So, don’t hesitate to reread our compiled list whenever you need inspiration!
