quotations about youth
Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.
JON KRAKAUER
Into the Wild
Youth is often a scoffer at destiny.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
In this conflict between youth and its elders, youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition. Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established--Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the elders, it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to the institutions, customs, and ideas, and finding them stupid, inane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem.
RANDOLPH BOURNE
"Youth", The Atlantic Monthly, April 1912
When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance, Dance, Dance
Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
Since time immemorial, youth has set the universal standard of physical beauty, and the reason is simply that a shapely firm young face and body are more attractive sexually and aesthetically than bulges, sags and wrinkles.
HUGH HEFNER
Playboy, Jan. 1974
So wise so young, they say, do never live long.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do we know that his future will not be equal to our present?
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
All of us who are worth anything spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to John Gisborne, Nov. 16, 1819
Youth without beauty is half a prize.
G. WHITE
attributed, Day's Collacon
When beautiful youth is gone, not much of life remains.
G. ULTHORN
attributed, Day's Collacon
You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
SAUL BELLOW
Seize the Day
Youth has needs, I know,
And headlong yearnings like the mountain streams
That rush adown the nearest path they find
To meet the sounding river.
ANNA KATHERINE GREEN
"Womanhood"
Maiden, that read'st this simple rhyme,
Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay;
Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime,
For oh, it is not always May!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"It Is Not Always May"
We are young only once, after that we need some other excuse.
ANONYMOUS
Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.
ROB SHEFFIELD
Love is a Mix Tape
Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay
No moment but in purchase of its worth,
And what it's worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
A man that is young in years, may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Youth And Age", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
She does not simulate youth, and yet she is young. Her smile is as captivating as ever, her laugh as merry and as contagious; and though she can no longer romp with her juniors, she enjoys a vivacious game by proxy as much as she ever did in person, and teases with the same innocent and admirable coquetry. Age has quieted her body but not sobered her spirit. As the life of youth is still hers, so are all its interests. In truth, they have widened with the widening years. As her children have grown up and entered into their several professions, she has accompanied them. Whatever touches their life touches hers, whatever interests them interests her. If she cannot enter into their fields, she can at least come to the fence and look over. So, disavowing all professional knowledge, she is yet singularly intelligent in medicine, law, journalism, theology, and teaching. Her children, when they come home, find her always a ready pupil, and, often to their surprise, their intellectual comrade. Although infirmity begins to put its limitations on her activities, never did life seem to her to be so large, so varied, so full of ever-broadening interest. She occasionally brings out of the past sacred and stimulating memories. But she does not live in the past. She lives in her children, that is in the present, and in her grandchildren, that is in the future.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder