quotations about youth
In the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint,
Each lost day has its patron saint!
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
What hurts so bad about youth isn't the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It's the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.
MARY KARR
Lit
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should never be lost.
RANDOLPH BOURNE
"Youth", The Atlantic Monthly, April 1912
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
Youth holds no society with grief.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth--are something better than youth.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
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
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
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
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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
My youth is the foundation of me.
KHALID
"American Teen"
Youth is an emblem of heaven; there alone its bloom is eternal.
F. VALENTYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
In youth, prepare for manhood.
L. MURRAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
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
The category of youth is the product of innumerable forms of assessment, intervention and normalisation, as well as the vehicle for achieving a range of social and governmental objectives. In addition, youth is not a singular entity, but rather an entire range of sub-categories: the 'delinquent' youth, the 'subcultural' youth, the 'at-risk' youth.
GORDON TAIT
Making Sense of Mass Education
Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,
Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
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