quotations about youth
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough.
LORD CHESTERFIELD
attributed, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign
Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"
Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold, and despair.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
Ethel Churchill: or, The Two Brides
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
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
Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,
Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should never be lost.
RANDOLPH BOURNE
"Youth", The Atlantic Monthly, April 1912
The magnet does not more surely and powerfully attract the needle, than youth by some electric sympathy of soul is attracted by youth.
ROBERT SHELTON MACKENZIE
Titian: A Romance of Venice
My youth is the foundation of me.
KHALID
"American Teen"
With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
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
There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
So tutor youth that the sins of age be not imputed to thee.
PYTHAGORAS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Time ever mocks all youthful hopes;
He laughs at ever plan youth makes;
He buries fame and honor deep
In grave of hope--too late youth wakes.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Time's Ravages"
The sport of youth is the terror of age.
ZORZI
attributed, Day's Collacon
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2010: Odyssey Two
A country that betrays its youth is not going to survive.
DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH
"How government policy disfavors the young", MPR News, March 14, 2017
Youth yearns to youth, full blood loves full blood only.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid.
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
The Possibility of an Island