quotations about youth
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
You can have your youth
It'll rot before your eyes
BOB DYLAN
"Long Time Gone"
In the morning of life, before its wearisome journey,
The youthful soul doth expand, in the simple luxury of being;
It hath not contracted its wishes, nor set a limit on its hopes;
The wing of fancy is unclipped, and sin hath not seared the feelings:
Each feature is stamped with immortality, for all its desires are infinite,
And it seeketh an ocean of happiness, to fill the deep hollow within.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
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 beautiful; its friendship is precious; the intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn and stained harness of older life.
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS
Outdoors at Idlewild
The youth is always going to decide the future.
BENJI MADDEN
"Benji Madden on Good Charlotte's Comeback, Cameron Diaz and Society's Celebrity Obsession", Newsweek, July 15, 2016
I too was young once--or I think so--see,
How the years slip like coins from open hands!
KENNETH RAND
"The Prodigal"
Imprudent restrictions often force youth farther than enticement would carry them; and careless limitation is frequently worse than no injunction.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
The activity of the young is like that of railcars in motion--they tear along with noise and turmoil, and leave peace behind them. The quietest nooks, invaded by them, lose their quietude as they pass, and recover it only on their departure.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them -- the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
W. H. AUDEN
"One of the Family", Forewords and Afterwords
Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral
It is the folly of youth to be too eager for manhood.
VON VIZIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exist for his sake.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Great Quotes for Great Educators
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"
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
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, Aug. 21, 1750
YOUTH is the springtime of life, the seed and budding season of our existence, when the garden of our soul should be stocked, so that in the after-years it will adorn and gild our lives, and carry us in manly vigor as our onward journey we take, through the many and dangerous roads of this life. If our youth has been a season of sowing and planting good seed, our walk through this world will be one of comparative ease, with strong faith and unswerving straightness, and we carry on over every obstacle and through every trial, implicitly trusting and ever believing. On the other hand, if our youth has been neglected, and the soil untouched and uncultivated, most likely tares and foul weeds have got root in our souls, and it is late in life, if ever they be eradicated. Again, if in youth we have been taught to cling to the Rock of Ages, as years roll on our grasp becomes the firmer, till at the close of mortal life we step with surety and with joy on the glorious and ever happy high land of immortality.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Youth", Short Essays
One spring of youth have we. When that is o'er,
And summer's fleeting dream, then, dear my friends,
Our autumn days run on to wintry ends,
Whose breath is chill. Lo, Age is at the door!
CLARA MARCELLE FARRAR GREENE
"Wine On the Lees"
When I was young my heart was young then, too.
And anything that it would tell me, that's the thing that I would do.
ANNE MURRAY
"Snowbird"