"Growing old is not growing up"
About this Quote
“Growing old is not growing up” lands like a gentle rebuke delivered with a cleric’s calm authority. Horton strips away the comforting assumption that time automatically confers wisdom. The line works because it’s built on a near-rhyme of concepts we’re trained to merge: age and maturity. By separating them, he turns the obvious into an indictment.
The intent is pastoral but pointed. Horton isn’t mocking the elderly; he’s challenging the moral laziness that hides behind birthdays and social status. “Growing old” is passive, biological, inevitable. “Growing up” is active, ethical, chosen. One happens to you; the other demands something from you: self-scrutiny, accountability, the hard work of becoming less governed by ego, resentment, or fear.
The subtext is especially sharp for a clergyman working through the first half of the 20th century, when institutions often treated seniority as virtue. Horton’s era saw people “age” through catastrophe - World War I’s disillusionment, the Depression’s brutality, World War II’s moral shocks, then Cold War anxieties - without necessarily becoming more humane. The quote quietly asks: did suffering enlarge our compassion, or just harden our habits?
There’s also a congregational edge to it. Churches can reward longevity, tradition, and deference; Horton’s line insists that spiritual adulthood isn’t a matter of tenure. It’s measured in growth: the capacity to change, to forgive, to relinquish childish certainties. Time alone doesn’t sanctify. It only reveals what we’ve been rehearsing all along.
The intent is pastoral but pointed. Horton isn’t mocking the elderly; he’s challenging the moral laziness that hides behind birthdays and social status. “Growing old” is passive, biological, inevitable. “Growing up” is active, ethical, chosen. One happens to you; the other demands something from you: self-scrutiny, accountability, the hard work of becoming less governed by ego, resentment, or fear.
The subtext is especially sharp for a clergyman working through the first half of the 20th century, when institutions often treated seniority as virtue. Horton’s era saw people “age” through catastrophe - World War I’s disillusionment, the Depression’s brutality, World War II’s moral shocks, then Cold War anxieties - without necessarily becoming more humane. The quote quietly asks: did suffering enlarge our compassion, or just harden our habits?
There’s also a congregational edge to it. Churches can reward longevity, tradition, and deference; Horton’s line insists that spiritual adulthood isn’t a matter of tenure. It’s measured in growth: the capacity to change, to forgive, to relinquish childish certainties. Time alone doesn’t sanctify. It only reveals what we’ve been rehearsing all along.
Quote Details
| Topic | Aging |
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