quotations about youth
It's not simply that youth is full of beauty and energy; it is a time of promise, of possibility, of any number of choose-your-own-adventure stories.
MISS ROSEN
"Take a Sip from the Fountain of Eternal Youth", Crave Online, March 15, 2017
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Though the deep heart of existence beat forever like a boy's?
ALFRED TENNYSON
Locksley Hall
Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Fortune's Child", Lapham's Quarterly: Youth
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
A youth, like a tree, needs pruning.
WIGGINS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth's follies are soon forgot.
ALBRECHT VON WALLENSTEIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
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
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
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
The young are always in extremes.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
Every thing is pretty that is young.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
Youth that is so highly prized passes quickly like a dream; sad and wrinkled old age forthwith impends over our head.
MIMNERMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Treasures are not for youth; at twenty years of age, one does not know how to be rich, or how to be loved.
MME. DE GRARDIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
So tutor youth that the sins of age be not imputed to thee.
PYTHAGORAS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
It is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can never have enough of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
O happy childhood! blessed youth!
But once we know thy potent power;
But once we live all careless free;
No cross to mar our love-lit bower.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Heart-Yearnings"
It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
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