quotations about youth
How much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter to his family, Oct. 18, 1918
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
Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy!
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
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
It is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can never have enough of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
ANONYMOUS
O happy childhood! blessed youth!
But once we know thy potent power;
But once we live all careless free;
No cross to mar our love-lit bower.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Heart-Yearnings"
Tell me, why are the old friends kind,
And ever the tenderest, too?
Youth has no art, but an open mind,
And its love is sincere and true.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Tell Me"
Kings live in Palaces, and Pigs in sties,
And youth in Expectation. Youth is wise.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"Habitations", Sonnets and Verses
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
Youth that is so highly prized passes quickly like a dream; sad and wrinkled old age forthwith impends over our head.
MIMNERMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,
Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Though the deep heart of existence beat forever like a boy's?
ALFRED TENNYSON
Locksley Hall
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
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"
This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
speech at University of Cape Town, South Africa, Jun. 6, 1966
The sport of youth is the terror of age.
ZORZI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth yearns to youth, full blood loves full blood only.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
In our spring-time every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt