As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
On the one hand maybe I’ve remained infantile, while on the other I matured quickly, because at a young age I was very aware of suffering and fear.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the duality of personal growth and the preservation of innocence shaped by early experiences of suffering and fear.
In this quote, Audrey Hepburn expresses a complex relationship with her own development as a person. She acknowledges that while she might still possess childlike qualities, her early encounters with life's hardships instilled in her a maturity that belies her age. This juxtaposition highlights the ways in which life experiences, particularly those involving pain and challenge, can influence one's growth and perspective, leading to a unique blend of innocence and wisdom.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity, you can use this quote to illustrate how challenges can lead to personal growth.
More from Audrey Hepburn
All quotes →If I'm honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.
True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.
This is what you do on your very first day in Paris. You get yourself, not a drizzle, but some honest-to-goodness rain, and you find yourself someone really nice and drive her through the Bois de Boulogne in a taxi. The rain's very important. That's when Paris smells its sweetest. It's the damp chestnut trees.
I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.
Good things aren't supposed to just fall into your lap. God is very generous, but He expects you to do your part first.
Similar quotes
By turning our culture over to the spectacle of child stars and their growing pains, we simply wind up taking their childishness seriously and ensuring that they don't grow up at all. And neither do we.
It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.
Gods, religions and national boundaries are absolutely imaginary. They don't tend to exist. As soon as you pull back half a mile and look down at the Earth there are no national boundaries. There aren't even national boundaries when you get down and walk around. They're just imaginary lines we draw on maps. I just get fascinated by people who assume that things that are imaginary have no relevance to their lives.
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.
Personalization is everywhere. We are constantly asked, directly or indirectly, to create Our Own Whatever - containing and limited to our 'favorite sources of information.' Republicans do that; Democrats do it; environmentalists do it; terrorists do it; science fiction enthusiasts do it. That's a real problem, I think.