quotations about youth
Youth is no excuse for sloppiness.
LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
Treasures are not for youth; at twenty years of age, one does not know how to be rich, or how to be loved.
MME. DE GRARDIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
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"
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"
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
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
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"
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
Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
preface, The Snow-Image
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower?
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Palingenesis"
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
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
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
The young are always in extremes.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
The days of my youth I remember as nearly always in need of explanation, and not as much fun as advertised in the promotions for board games and breakfast cereal.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Fortune's Child", Lapham's Quarterly: Youth
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nature and Selected Essays
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
Youth should be radical. Youth should demand change in the world. Youth should not accept the old order if the world is to move on.
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
"Student Riots", The Emporia Gazette, Apr. 8, 1932
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Difficulty of Being