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45 Insightful Quotes About Growing Up To Help You Embrace Life’s Journey

As we get older, we experience the bittersweet evolution from wide-eyed innocence to a more seasoned understanding of the world around us. We’ve collected over 40 quotes about growing up to offer a glimpse into the challenges, joys, and self-discoveries of moving through life.

Growing up doesn’t have to be serious or scary, but you’re not alone in sometimes feeling afraid or cautious of the transformation. Join us as we delve into these growing up quotes from famous authors, celebrities, and philosophers as they uplift you through life’s bumps in the road.

We hope that these sayings about growing up help to put you at ease with the tumultuous times that can occur as we grow old. And if you have Pinterest and see an image you love, please consider us for a pin! Enjoy!

Quotes About Growing Up

1. “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

Quotes about growing up

2. “Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” – Virginia Woolf

Growing up quotes

3. “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” E.E. Cummings

Grow up quotes

4. “Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.” – Chili Davis

Famous quotes about growing up

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

Sayings about growing up

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6. “When you grow up you realize why Peter Pan never wanted to grow up.” – Unknown

Funny grown up quotes

7. “You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.” – P. J. O’Rourke

Children grown up quotes

8. “You must pay the penalty of growing up. You must leave fairyland behind you.” – L.M. Montgomery

Quotes of growing up

9. “Who says we have to grow up?” – Walt Disney

Short quotes about growing up

10. “I make mistakes growing up. I’m not perfect; I’m not a robot.” – Justin Bieber

Quotations growing up

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11. “Growing up is hard, love. Otherwise, everyone would do it.” – Kim Harrison

Growing up sayings

12. “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

Quotes grow up

13. “Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.” — Tom Stoppard

Phrases about growing up

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

Best quotes about growing up

15. “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 Dostoyevsky

Quotes about growing up and life

16. “You can’t stop your children from growing up, but you can be present so you don’t miss your children going up.” – Unknown

Children grow up quote

17. “Discover your mind, discover your soul. Learn your heart, learn to grow.” – Unknown

Inspirational quotes about growing up

18. Being an adult is the dumbest thing I have ever done.” – Unknown

Funny quotes about growing up

19. I’ve found that growing up means being honest. About what I want. What I need. What I feel. Who I am.” – Unknown

Quotes for growing up

20. Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.” – Phyliss Diller

Children grow up quotes

21. “Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.” – Daniel Black

Quote about growing up

22. “Growing up, we are told many things; one being, you can do anything. But somewhere between child and adult, things change.” – Julie Hebert

Quote growing up

23. “You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end, she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls.” – J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Quotes about girls growing up

24. Don’t grow up, it’s a trap.” – Unknown

Growing up funny quote

25. “We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.” – Bryan White

Growing up humor quote

26. “I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.” – Louisa May Alcott

Quotation about growing up

27. “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

Growing up quote

28. “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.” – George Bernard Shaw

Best growing up quote

29. “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.” – Ethel Barrymore

Growing up funny quotes

30. “Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework, never finished.” – Lois McMaster Bujold

Inspirational quote about growing up

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31. “Growing up is never easy. You hold on to 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.” – The Wonder Years  

32. “Part of growing up is just taking what you learn from that and moving on and not taking it to heart.” – Beverley Mitchell

33. “That’s one of the things we learn as we grow older, how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.” – L.M. Montgomery

34. 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

35. “Age is a necessary but insufficient requirement for growing up. There are immature old people, and there are appropriately mature young people.” – Henry Cloud

36. “Don’t grow old to give up and don’t give up growing up.” – Bernard Kelvin Clive

37. “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

38. “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

39. “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.

40. “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

41. “We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” – May Lamberton Becker

42. “If you’re gonna screw up, do it while you’re young. Older you get, the harder it is to bounce back.” – Winston Groom

43. “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

44. “I had a lot of growing up to do. A lot of times, I learned the hard way.” –  Allen Iverson

45. “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