Growing Up Quotes

Growing up is an intimidating proposition, especially if you’re the one counting the birthdays until you reach 18. You have to move from being an irresponsible teenager who’s lived comfortably in your parents’ home to a responsible adult-like person ready to make your way in the world. Things that you never worried about before, like insurance and bills and job interviews and landlords, suddenly start appearing in your life and piling up. It’s enough to make you want to build a pillow fort in your living room, turn in your adult card, and never come out again.

On the other hand, growing up can be an amazing thing. You have the chance to step out from beneath the shadow of your parents to become your own fantastic individual. Once you’ve stepped out on your own, you can make the world into anything you want it to be. It’s a scary prospect, to be out there in the world without the structure of school or the rules of your parents, but it can also be an amazing opportunity.

Don’t let the idea of growing up scare you out of actually growing up. You have the potential to do amazing and inspiring things, if you just let yourself spread your wings. Go out into the world, and turn it into the kind of place that you would want to leave for your children.

To help remind you what an amazing experience growing up can be, we’ve collected some of the best growing up quotes from around the web. Let them inspire you to spread your winds and be an unstoppable adult.

28 Growing Up Quotes

1. “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

Growing Up Quotes

2. Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
– Chili Davis

3. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

— Anne Frank

4. Once in awhile it really hits people that they don’t have to experience life in the way they have been told to.
— Unknown

5. “Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them – a mother’s approval, a father’s nod – are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.”
― Mitch Albom

6. You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.
— George Bernard Shaw

7. Childhood is like being drunk; everyone remembers what you did, except you.
— Unknown

8. Don’t let growing up bring you down.

— Unknown

9. The trick is growing up without growing old.
– Casey Stengel

10. Even though you’re growing up, you should never stop having fun.
– Nina Dobrev

11. “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

12. When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. — Jonathan Safran Foer

13. As child we always want to grow, but as we grow up we understand that broken toys & lost pencil much better than lost friends & broken heart …. – Unknown.

14. 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

15. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
— E. E. Cummings

16. “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

17. True love is about growing as a couple, learning about each other, and never giving up on each other. – Unknown

18. When I was growing up, my mother was always a friend to my siblings and me (in addition to being all the other things a mom is), and I was always grateful for that because I knew she was someone I could talk to and joke with, and argue with and that nothing would ever harm that friendship.
– Marlo Thomas

19. Yes, I could have made some different choices in life but I did what i did, both good and bad and I am not who I was, I have moved on, It’s all part of growing up.
— Unknown

20. “My mother… she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.”
― Jodi Picoult

21. “I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway… let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.”
― C. JoyBell C.

22. Maturity is putting a process between opportunity and decision.
— Unknown

23. 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

24. I guess a big part of growing up is dealing with regret. Swallowing your pride. There are some things in life you can’t go back and change, no matter how much you want to.
— Unknown

25. As we grow up, we realize it is less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones.
— Unknown

26. Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
– James A. Baldwin

27. It’s amazing because when you’re a kid you see the life you want and it never crosses your mind that it isn’t gonna turn out that way.
— Love & Basketball

28. “If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!”
― J.M. Barrie