quotations about youth
I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
Fond youth, give o'er,
And vex thy soul no more
In seeking what were better far unfound;
Alas! thy gains
Are only present pains
To gather scorpions for a future wound.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral
Youth holds no society with grief.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth is not a time of life--it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.
SAMUEL ULLMAN
"Youth", The Silver Treasury, Prose and Verse for Every Mood
Youth is not only the future of the country. Youth is first and foremost the present of this country. And it is by investing in youth in the present that one can speak legitimately about its future.
HAITI LIBRE
"The involvement of youth in Haitian politics", Haiti Libre, January 3, 2017
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should never be lost.
RANDOLPH BOURNE
"Youth", The Atlantic Monthly, April 1912
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth--are something better than youth.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Our desire for youth isn't just a fear of dying; it's the desire to keep a life worth living, and for us, that means immortality is not merely living to 150. It means living to 150, perpetually age 30.
FARAH MOHAMMED
"Marketing Immortality", JSTOR Daily, February 2, 2017
Youth's follies are soon forgot.
ALBRECHT VON WALLENSTEIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth is an emblem of heaven; there alone its bloom is eternal.
F. VALENTYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
The pleasure and sadness of youth is that the speed of its passing is never thought about; and so you say that you will do this or that in a year, in five years, only to wake up one morning to realize that what you thought was infinitely prolonged has ended.
DEREK TANGYE
The Way to Minak
The retrospect on youth is too often like looking back on what was a fair and promising country, but is now desolated by an overwhelming torrent, from which we have just escaped. Or it is like visiting the grave of a friend whom we had injured, and are precluded by his death from the possibility of making him an atonement.
JOHN FOSTER
John Foster: Life and Thoughts
With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
In youth, prepare for manhood.
L. MURRAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
There may be no fool like an old fool, but our observation has been that the young fool runs him a pretty close second.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
It must be a very weary day to the youth when he first discovers that, after all, he will only become a man.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Youth wrenches the sceptre from old age, and sets the crown on its own head before it is entitled to it.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"