Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

I feel like I've grown up a bit. I'm a bit more confident, and I've been reading more, and I've had a little more time to myself. I went on this writing trip to gather my thoughts about where and who I am in this world, and why we're all here.

It's a beautiful thing at 60 to know who you are.

I've done a lot of things and I've been a lot of people, but now I've come to realize who I am.

The older you are, I think you realize what you enjoy and what you don't need, what wears you out and what's important.

Once you get older, you get a little closer to yourself, intimate.

With age and experience, I started to know myself better.

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.

I wish I had been more self-aware earlier, but I think that just comes with age.

I'm older and older. With any experience you have, you know more about yourself.

You may think me crude, and probably I am crude, but I am not so crude as I was, for I am clever enough to see that the girl of nineteen who thought herself a genius was only an unusual girl writing her heart out.

I was 20 years old and felt I had a lot to offer, even to myself.

We neither get better or worse as we get older, but more like ourselves.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

By the age of fifty, you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.

I always write to understand my place in the world. I can see myself and my life unfold on the page, and I can understand my strengths, my weaknesses - I can see where I need to step up a bit.

The older you get the more you understand what you're doing.

I'm beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

I feel the older I get, the more I'm learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it's all about finding yourself.

When you get to be a 45-year-old man, you start to realize: 'I know who I am, and I know who I'm not. I know my shortcomings, I know my strengths; maybe some of my shortcomings are my strengths.' You start to face yourself as you truly are.

Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.

We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.

When I turned 45, I lay in bed reflecting on all life had taught me. My soul sprang a leak and ideas flowed out. My pen simply caught them and set the words on paper. I typed them up and turned them into a newspaper column of the 45 lessons life taught me. When I hit 50, I added five more lessons and the paper ran the column again.

A degree of self-awareness is extremely valuable... I hope I have that going forward.

The older one gets the more one comes to resemble oneself.