quotations about youth
Heh? Eh? Our youth is dead.
From the minute we discover it with eyes closed
Advancing into mountain light.
Ouch.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Our Youth Is Dead", The Tennis Court Oath: A Book of Poems
Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.
SARAH ADDISON ALLEN
The Girl Who Chased the Moon
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
ANONYMOUS
Youth yearns to youth, full blood loves full blood only.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
Youth is when you are supposed to question who you are and what you believe, when the values and personhood given to you by your society and family are subject to critical examination so that you can redefine your own being.
JOE MARIANI
"On snow and God and Swarthmore", Swarthmore Phoenix, March 16, 2017
Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2010: Odyssey Two
O Youth! flame earnest, still aspire,
With energies immortal!
To many a heaven of Desire,
Our yearning opes a portal!
And tho' Age wearies by the way,
And hearts break in the furrow,
We'll sow the golden grain Today--
The Harvest comes tomorrow.
GERALD MASSEY
"Today and Tomorrow"
Youth is the gay and pleasant spring of life, when joy is stirring in the dancing blood, and nature calls us with a thousand songs to share her general feast.
JOSEPH RIDGWAY
attributed, The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three Thousand Years
There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Celephaïs"
Youth is the crossroads between who you are and who you will become.
MISS ROSEN
"Take a Sip from the Fountain of Eternal Youth", Crave Online, March 15, 2017
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
If your youth has come and gone and old age is coming on, and your body bends beneath despair. Take your burden to the cross and leave it there.
GARY QUARLES
Inspirational Poems of God's Love and Guidance
Youth is a disease that must be borne with patiently. Time, indeed, will cure it.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
Come Rack! Come Rope!
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", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
There's no medicine for getting old and the antidote for youth is experience. But you cannot have a good experience unless you make some bad decisions.
ERROL D. ALEXANDER
The Rattling of the Chains
When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Plague of Doves
Youth is naturally addicted to amusement, and in this item his expenditure too often exceeds his allotted income.
JOHN AYRTON PARIS
Philosophy in Sport Made Science in Earnest
After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to his cousin Cici