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 Iβve 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 βIf 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
Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.
For they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming.
To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.
It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.