quotations about youth
Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
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 is not like a new garment which we can keep fresh and fair by wearing sparingly; youth, while we have it, we must wear daily, and it will fast wear away.
JOHN FOSTER
John Foster: Life and Thoughts
This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
speech at University of Cape Town, South Africa, Jun. 6, 1966
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
Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy!
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
The sport of youth is the terror of age.
ZORZI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth is an emblem of heaven; there alone its bloom is eternal.
F. VALENTYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth isn't wasted on, or reserved for, the young.
JULIAN KIMBLE
"At Trillectro, youth is not wasted", Washington Post, August 28, 2016
For youth, everything is sport.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.
SOPHIA LOREN
attributed, The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes
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
In our spring-time every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
I remember what it was ... to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting--everything--was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
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
Youth, enthusiasm, and tenderness, are like the days of spring; instead of complaining of their brevity try to enjoy them.
RUCKERT
attributed, Treasury of Thought: Forming an Encyclopedia of Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors
The youth do not see the old. They are not programmed to see the old, who are cancelled, negated, wiped out.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
How much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter to his family, Oct. 18, 1918
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Difficulty of Being