Literary notes about growth (AI summary)
The word "growth" in literature conveys both a literal and a metaphorical journey from the nascent to the fully developed. In many works, it describes physical changes—ranging from a beard’s short-term expansion [1] to the botanical flourish in wild landscapes [2, 3]—while also symbolizing progress in thought, spirit, and society. Scholars relate it to the unfolding of human potential and intellectual maturity [4, 5, 6], as well as the steady evolution of cultures and social institutions [7, 8]. Whether depicting natural life cycles or the advancing stages of moral and conceptual development [9, 10, 11], "growth" becomes a versatile emblem of transformation and continuity in literature.
- His long, thin face, emaciated with disease, and surrounded by huge black whiskers, and a beard of a week's growth, looked perfectly unearthly.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie - There is a dense growth of bushes to the left and right of the stage.
— from The Sea-Gull by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - A new growth of grass and bushes was springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass of thorny twigs.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - Embyronic growth of the human infant preserves, without doubt, some of the traits of lower forms of life.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - Since growth is just a movement toward a completed being, the final ideal is immobile.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - Other values of privacy are related to the growth of self-consciousness, self-respect, and personal ideals of conduct.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - Every nation, it appears, has its time of growth and its period of efflorescence, after which comes the age of decay.
— from The Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole - [27] Spencer's manner of looking at the social organism may be illustrated in what he says about growth in "social aggregates."
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - Seldom, too, do we entirely conquer even a single fault, nor are we zealous for daily growth in grace.
— from The Imitation of Christ by à Kempis Thomas - The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde - Definition means essentially the growth of a meaning out of vagueness into definiteness .
— from How We Think by John Dewey
