quotations about youth
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
Youth is the ultimate limited resource.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid.
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
The Possibility of an Island
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"
Every thing is pretty that is young.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"Habitations", Sonnets and Verses
Youth is no excuse for sloppiness.
LISA GARDNER
The Perfect Husband
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
ANONYMOUS
He who has youth and health can attain to anything.
AGATHOCLES
attributed, Day's Collacon
The young are always in extremes.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
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
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"
Youth is the crossroads between who you are and who you will become.
MISS ROSEN
"Take a Sip from the Fountain of Eternal Youth", Crave Online, March 15, 2017
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Difficulty of Being
There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.
SOPHIA LOREN
attributed, The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes
When you see the way things deteriorate before your very eyes. Everything running down hill. It's kind of silly to even think about youth.
SAM SHEPARD
Buried Child
Youth is a disease that must be borne with patiently. Time, indeed, will cure it.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
Come Rack! Come Rope!
It's not simply that youth is full of beauty and energy; it is a time of promise, of possibility, of any number of choose-your-own-adventure stories.
MISS ROSEN
"Take a Sip from the Fountain of Eternal Youth", Crave Online, March 15, 2017
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, Aug. 21, 1750
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