quotations about youth
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint,
Each lost day has its patron saint!
BRET HARTE
"The Lost Galleon"
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.
DAPHNE DU MAURIER
Rebecca
Youth is not only the future of the country. Youth is first and foremost the present of this country. And it is by investing in youth in the present that one can speak legitimately about its future.
HAITI LIBRE
"The involvement of youth in Haitian politics", Haiti Libre, January 3, 2017
In youth, prepare for manhood.
L. MURRAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Our desire for youth isn't just a fear of dying; it's the desire to keep a life worth living, and for us, that means immortality is not merely living to 150. It means living to 150, perpetually age 30.
FARAH MOHAMMED
"Marketing Immortality", JSTOR Daily, February 2, 2017
Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"Habitations", Sonnets and Verses
There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth--are something better than youth.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
It is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can never have enough of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
A youth, like a tree, needs pruning.
WIGGINS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral
Youth's follies are soon forgot.
ALBRECHT VON WALLENSTEIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 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
Fond youth, give o'er,
And vex thy soul no more
In seeking what were better far unfound;
Alas! thy gains
Are only present pains
To gather scorpions for a future wound.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Youth is an emblem of heaven; there alone its bloom is eternal.
F. VALENTYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
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
Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,
Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana