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"
My youth is the foundation of me.
KHALID
"American Teen"
The retrospect on youth is too often like looking back on what was a fair and promising country, but is now desolated by an overwhelming torrent, from which we have just escaped. Or it is like visiting the grave of a friend whom we had injured, and are precluded by his death from the possibility of making him an atonement.
JOHN FOSTER
John Foster: Life and Thoughts
The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The category of youth is the product of innumerable forms of assessment, intervention and normalisation, as well as the vehicle for achieving a range of social and governmental objectives. In addition, youth is not a singular entity, but rather an entire range of sub-categories: the 'delinquent' youth, the 'subcultural' youth, the 'at-risk' youth.
GORDON TAIT
Making Sense of Mass Education
The period of youth is the glory of nature, and the healthful development of all the resources of strength deposited in our nature is the glory of youth.
ELIAS LYMAN MAGOON
Proverbs for the people: or, Illustrations of practical godliness drawn from the Book of Wisdom
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should never be lost.
RANDOLPH BOURNE
"Youth", The Atlantic Monthly, April 1912
Youth is an emblem of heaven; there alone its bloom is eternal.
F. VALENTYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
Youth's follies are soon forgot.
ALBRECHT VON WALLENSTEIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth--are something better than youth.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
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
Youth wrenches the sceptre from old age, and sets the crown on its own head before it is entitled to it.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
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
Heh? Eh? Our youth is dead.
From the minute we discover it with eyes closed
Advancing into mountain light.
Ouch.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Our Youth Is Dead", The Tennis Court Oath: A Book of Poems
The pleasure and sadness of youth is that the speed of its passing is never thought about; and so you say that you will do this or that in a year, in five years, only to wake up one morning to realize that what you thought was infinitely prolonged has ended.
DEREK TANGYE
The Way to Minak
In youth, prepare for manhood.
L. MURRAY
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 must be wanton, youth must be quick,
Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana