Growth is the only evidence of life.
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) English prelate, Catholic Cardinal, theologian
Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ch. 1 (1879)
(Source)
A favorite phrase of his, which he felt was drawn directly from the work of Thomas Scott.
Quotations about:
personal improvement
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
There is no “trick” in being young: it happens to you. But the process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if is good, it is better than your youth. If it is bad, it is not because you are older, but because you have not grown.
Marya Mannes (1904-1990) American author and critic [pen name "Sec"]
More in Anger: Some Opinions, Uncensored and Unteleprompted (1958)
(Source)
Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, 4.7 (1952 ed.)
The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at that time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed the ages fled. He is but a superficial thinker who would despise and refuse to hear of them merely because they are absurd. No man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors, either of thought or action; and no society has made such advances as to be capable of no improvement from the retrospect of its past folly and credulity.
Charles Mackay (1814-1889) Scottish poet, journalist, song writer
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “The Alchymists” (1841)
(Source)
There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: myself.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1888-12), “A Christmas Sermon,” sec. 2, Scribner’s Magazine, Vol. 4
(Source)
Originally written in the winter of 1887-88. Collected in Across the Plains, ch. 12 (1892).
We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.W. H. Auden (1907-1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Age of Anxiety, Part 6 [Malin] (1948)
(Source)
