quotations about youth
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
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"
The sport of youth is the terror of age.
ZORZI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
My youth is the foundation of me.
KHALID
"American Teen"
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2010: Odyssey Two
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
Every thing is pretty that is young.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
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 is the ultimate limited resource.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
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
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
ANONYMOUS
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Difficulty of Being
The young are always in extremes.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
Tell me, why are the old friends kind,
And ever the tenderest, too?
Youth has no art, but an open mind,
And its love is sincere and true.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Tell Me"
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
Youth is no excuse for sloppiness.
LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
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