YOUTH QUOTES III
quotations about youth
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
My salad days;
When I was green in judgment.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Antony and Cleopatra
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
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.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
When beautiful youth is gone, not much of life remains.
G. ULTHORN
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.
JANE ADDAMS
The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House
Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.
ROB SHEFFIELD
Love is a Mix Tape
Oh happy youth! life's oasis of beauty!
What time in after years so pure and sweet?
Free from the lab'ring progress of great manhood,
It treads life's pathway with elastic feet!
C. B. LANGSTON
"Youth"
Youth is the time when hearts are large.
HERMAN MELVILLE
"On the Slain Collegians"
You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
SAUL BELLOW
Seize the Day
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
So wise so young, they say, do never live long.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
We are young only once, after that we need some other excuse.
ANONYMOUS
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"
Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
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
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
A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon