quotations about youth
It must be a very weary day to the youth when he first discovers that, after all, he will only become a man.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
A country that betrays its youth is not going to survive.
DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH
"How government policy disfavors the young", MPR News, March 14, 2017
Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
With adolescent egotism and a lot of money one can pretty much rule the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
Youth yearns to youth, full blood loves full blood only.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Of Human Bondage
Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold, and despair.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
Ethel Churchill: or, The Two Brides
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2010: Odyssey Two
O Youth! flame earnest, still aspire,
With energies immortal!
To many a heaven of Desire,
Our yearning opes a portal!
And tho' Age wearies by the way,
And hearts break in the furrow,
We'll sow the golden grain Today--
The Harvest comes tomorrow.
GERALD MASSEY
"Today and Tomorrow"
Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.
SARAH ADDISON ALLEN
The Girl Who Chased the Moon
Youth is when you are supposed to question who you are and what you believe, when the values and personhood given to you by your society and family are subject to critical examination so that you can redefine your own being.
JOE MARIANI
"On snow and God and Swarthmore", Swarthmore Phoenix, March 16, 2017
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
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"
Youth is not like a new garment which we can keep fresh and fair by wearing sparingly; youth, while we have it, we must wear daily, and it will fast wear away.
JOHN FOSTER
John Foster: Life and Thoughts
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
Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
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
There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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