quotations about youth
The young are always in extremes.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
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
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
Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Difficulty of Being
Identifying and unlocking entrepreneurial potential among youth is vitally important as they are our future economic drivers.
ANONYMOUS
"Campbellsport team wins first place in 2017 IGNITE! Youth Idea Challenge", Fond du Lac Reporter, March 14, 2017
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
It is the folly of youth to be too eager for manhood.
VON VIZIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
How much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter to his family, Oct. 18, 1918
Every man is obsessed by the memories of his own youth.
UMBERTO ECO
The Paris Review, summer 2008
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
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
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
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
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
ANONYMOUS
I too was young once--or I think so--see,
How the years slip like coins from open hands!
KENNETH RAND
"The Prodigal"
Youth isn't wasted on, or reserved for, the young.
JULIAN KIMBLE
"At Trillectro, youth is not wasted", Washington Post, August 28, 2016
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
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