quotations about youth
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"
There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Celephaïs"
Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, Aug. 21, 1750
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
For youth, everything is sport.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Difficulty of Being
The young are always in extremes.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nature and Selected Essays
Youth should be radical. Youth should demand change in the world. Youth should not accept the old order if the world is to move on.
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
"Student Riots", The Emporia Gazette, Apr. 8, 1932
Youth is the ultimate limited resource.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
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
The days of my youth I remember as nearly always in need of explanation, and not as much fun as advertised in the promotions for board games and breakfast cereal.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Fortune's Child", Lapham's Quarterly: Youth
It is the folly of youth to be too eager for manhood.
VON VIZIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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
Youth is the gay and pleasant spring of life, when joy is stirring in the dancing blood, and nature calls us with a thousand songs to share her general feast.
JOSEPH RIDGWAY
attributed, The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three Thousand Years
Youth is beautiful; its friendship is precious; the intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn and stained harness of older life.
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS
Outdoors at Idlewild
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