quotations about youth
Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I too was young once--or I think so--see,
How the years slip like coins from open hands!
KENNETH RAND
"The Prodigal"
After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to his cousin Cici
If your youth has come and gone and old age is coming on, and your body bends beneath despair. Take your burden to the cross and leave it there.
GARY QUARLES
Inspirational Poems of God's Love and Guidance
The youth is always going to decide the future.
BENJI MADDEN
"Benji Madden on Good Charlotte's Comeback, Cameron Diaz and Society's Celebrity Obsession", Newsweek, July 15, 2016
It is the folly of youth to be too eager for manhood.
VON VIZIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Youth and Age", Essays; or Counsels Civil and Moral
You can have your youth
It'll rot before your eyes
BOB DYLAN
"Long Time Gone"
Imprudent restrictions often force youth farther than enticement would carry them; and careless limitation is frequently worse than no injunction.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
There's no medicine for getting old and the antidote for youth is experience. But you cannot have a good experience unless you make some bad decisions.
ERROL D. ALEXANDER
The Rattling of the Chains
Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exist for his sake.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Great Quotes for Great Educators
One spring of youth have we. When that is o'er,
And summer's fleeting dream, then, dear my friends,
Our autumn days run on to wintry ends,
Whose breath is chill. Lo, Age is at the door!
CLARA MARCELLE FARRAR GREENE
"Wine On the Lees"
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", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
When I was young my heart was young then, too.
And anything that it would tell me, that's the thing that I would do.
ANNE MURRAY
"Snowbird"
Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them -- the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
W. H. AUDEN
"One of the Family", Forewords and Afterwords
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, Aug. 21, 1750
In the morning of life, before its wearisome journey,
The youthful soul doth expand, in the simple luxury of being;
It hath not contracted its wishes, nor set a limit on its hopes;
The wing of fancy is unclipped, and sin hath not seared the feelings:
Each feature is stamped with immortality, for all its desires are infinite,
And it seeketh an ocean of happiness, to fill the deep hollow within.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Plague of Doves
We are only midway through the central verse of our youth when we see ourselves begin to blacken.... We had been seduced into thinking that we were immortal and suddenly the affair is over.
ANNE CARSON
Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
Youth is the season of hope, enterprise, and energy, to a nation as well as an individual.
WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS
attributed, Day's Collacon