quotations about youth
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
Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"Habitations", Sonnets and Verses
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 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
In youth alone, unhappy mortals live;
But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive:
Discolour'd sickness, anxious labour, come,
And age, and death's inexorable doom.
VIRGIL
Georgics
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Of Human Bondage
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
A youth, like a tree, needs pruning.
WIGGINS
attributed, Day's Collacon
For youth, everything is sport.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"
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
There may be no fool like an old fool, but our observation has been that the young fool runs him a pretty close second.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
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"
Youth isn't wasted on, or reserved for, the young.
JULIAN KIMBLE
"At Trillectro, youth is not wasted", Washington Post, August 28, 2016
Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,
Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
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
Every thing is pretty that is young.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
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
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2010: Odyssey Two
My youth is the foundation of me.
KHALID
"American Teen"